Hello, 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 one of their own poems that's been published in the magazine.

My guest today is the poet, memoirist, and translator, Jose Antonio

Rodriguez, whose honors include a Bob Bush Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters,

and a Discovery Award from the Writers League of Texas. He teaches in the MFA program at the University

of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Welcome, Jose. Thanks for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Now, the first poem you've decided to read today is World of the Future,

We Thirsted, by Naomi Shihab Nye. What drew you to this particular poem as you're looking over the

archive? Well, I'm, first, I'm a big fan of her work, you know,

and I've just always marveled at her,

the serenity of her poetry.

And this one specifically, I remember reading it in 2019

when it was published in The New Yorker,

and I loved the title just from the get-go.

I thought it was so expansive and mysterious, you know, very commanding, addressing the world of the future.

And the imagery is really beautiful and the sentiment and the questioning.

There's a kind of humility in the poem that really speaks to me.

Terrific.

Let's listen to the poem.

This is Jose Antonio Rodriguez reading World of the Future, We Thirsted, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

World of the Future, we thirsted.

...