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 select 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.

My guest today is Kate Baer, the New York Times bestselling author of three poetry collections, including most

recently, and yet. Kate, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

This is an honor, and I'm so excited to talk to you. Now, the first poem you've chosen to read is

the morning after by Ellen Bass. What was it about this particular poem that caught your eye

while you're

looking through our archives? The intimacy of it, I think, is what got me right away.

You know, it's this narration of a woman that could be any woman getting up in the morning

and seeing their partner and kind of going through maybe what to us is like a blip in the day,

but when you stop, she really stops and kind of measures it.

And I just, I loved it right away.

I'd read it before, but when I read it again, I thought, oh, I have to talk about this one.

Well, great.

Why don't we listen to the poem?

This is Kate Baer reading The Morning After by Ellen Bass.

The Morning After by Ellen Bass. The morning after, you stand at the counter pouring boiling water over the French roast, oily perfume rising in smoke. And when I

enter, you don't look up. You're hurrying to pack your lunch, snapping the lids on the little

plastic boxes while you call your mother to tell her you'll take her to the doctor.

I can't see a trace of the little slice of heaven we slipped into last night. A silk kimono floating

satin ponds and copper coi, stars falling to the water.

...