Hey listeners, we're doing things a little differently today onto the best of our knowledge and sharing an excerpt from a show we love.

It's called Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, and like to the best of our knowledge, it's driven by curiosity and compassion.

Every Sunday, Sam invites an actor, a writer, an activist, or a politician to speak from the heart in ways you probably

haven't heard from them before. Guests recently have included Margaret Atwood, Kate Blanchett,

Ezra Klein, Questlove, David Byrne, and Marina Abramovich. So if you're a regular to the best

of our knowledge listener, you might have heard our show on poetry in times of crisis.

And if you haven't already, definitely give it a listen. Well, today, we're continuing the celebration of national poetry month with a clip from Talk Easy.

This one features author Ocean Vuong.

Ocean and Sam discuss why Ocean wrote his autobiographical novel, On Earth, We're Briefly

Gorgeous. They talk about how he stayed the course creatively, what it means to be a first-generation

writer, and on a deeply personal note, how he wrestled with the grief of his mother's passing.

We hope you enjoy this conversation with Ocean Pouang as much as we did.

You can hear the full episode and more from Talk Easy with Sam Fregoso wherever you get your podcasts.

Your book came out just about two years ago and is now being re-released.

And I wondered, where does this piece land inside of you now?

That's a good question.

I think I've luckily have a lot of experience with this as a poet, because you're always,

you know, you're publishing poems, and so the pieces always come delayed.

They always live in the world much later than when you've made them, and sometimes they

feel absolutely estranged. The self that reckons with the work is absolutely estranged from the self that made the work.

And so at this point, I've gotten used to being kind of detached from the work.

You know, metaphors are tricky, but I think the metaphor I would use is making a book is kind of like building a raft on the shore, and then you kind of set the raft down river.

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