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

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

On this program, we invite a poet to choose a poem from the New Yorker Archive to read and discuss.

Then they read a poem of their own that's been published in the magazine.

Today, my guest is Jim Moore, who has

published eight poetry collections, including most recently Prognosis. He is the recipient of a

Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple Minnesota Book Awards. Jim, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here. So the first poem you've selected to read is, I wonder if I will miss the Moss by Jane Mead.

What drew you to this particular poem when you were looking through the archives?

Well, I remember when I first read it in 2021, I was really just so struck by it.

And it stayed with me.

I kept going back to it as a model of something.

I'm not sure exactly what.

But it stands in such a particularly powerful way for me.

Well, why don't we hear the poem?

This is Jim Moore reading, I wonder if I will miss the Moss by Jane Mead.

I wonder if I Will Miss the Moss by Jane Mead. I wonder if I will miss the moss.

I wonder if I will miss the moss after I fly off as much as I miss it now, just thinking

about leaving.

There were stones of many colors.

There were sticks holding both lichen and moss. There were red

gates with old hand-forged hardware. There were fields of dry grass, smelling of first rain,

...