Hello, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast.

I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.

Today we're talking about our newest poetry feature on New Yorker.com.

First person is a sequence of poems that follows the musings and mishings and mishaps of a 21st century female character known simply as I.

Here with me is the author of First Person, Eliza Griswold, a poet, journalist, and frequent contributor to the New Yorker.

Eliza won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for her book, Amity and Prosperity,

One Family and the Fracturing of America.

She's also received the J. Anthony Lucas Prize, a pen translation prize, and the Rome Prize,

among many, many other honors.

Eliza, it's great to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me. So tell, it's great to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for having me.

So tell us a little bit about the origins of this project.

When and why did you begin writing the poems that became first person?

When did I begin?

Probably almost a decade ago.

Oh, wow.

You know, I mean, this character emerged, who wasn't the poet, right,

as we're familiar with, right? As we always say, right? Right, right, exactly. But also,

I was almost past the experiences that the eye had had. I mean, a lot of what the eye, what I

wrestles with, ambition, motherhood, like wrestling with disparate identities.

And some of that was happening at the time.

...