Hello, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine.

As you may know, on this program, we invite poets to pick a poem from the magazine's archive,

to read and chat about, along with a poem of their own that's been published in The New Yorker.

Joining us today is Nick Flynn.

The author of several poetry collections and memoirs, he's received the Erickson Institute

Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, as well as awards and fellowships from Penn,

the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Library of Congress.

Welcome, Nick.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks, Kevin.

I saw also that you've been translated into 15 languages. Is that right? Yeah, not the poems, but the prose. The prose.

Yes, one book has been translated into 15 languages. How exciting. That's amazing. I don't point out

it's only one book, but... One book 15 times, that's great.

So the poem you've selected today is objectivity as blanket by Zoe Hitsig.

Tell us, what about this piece caught your attention as you're looking through our archives?

Well, the archives, as you know, you have to sort of sort through them. You don't have a whole list of poets that you know,

and then you sort of like remember a poem and see.

You have to sort of actually engage with it.

Each page comes up, there's 10 on each page.

And my attention online is not huge.

And so I got through 20 pages of that.

20 pages.

...