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 favorite poem from the New Yorker

archive to read and discuss alongside a poem of their own that's appeared in the magazine.

My guest today is Rachel Eliza Griffiths, a poet and artist who's received fellowships from

the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Kave Khanam Foundation,

and Yaddo, among others.

In 2012, her collection, Mule and Pear, was the inaugural winner of the Poetry Award

from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Eliza, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me, Kevin. So, the poem you've chosen to read today is Rainlight by W.S. Merwin.

Can you tell us why this one felt particularly special to you?

Sure. So unfortunately and very sadly, recently we lost W.S. Merwin, although we still have his poems.

And each day I've been thinking about Merwin's work, his spirit, his energy, who he was, all of the different things he saw in his life.

And then just the fact of kind of time passing.

And at the beginning of the year, it was Mary Oliver, a few days after W.S. Merwin, it was Linda Gregg.

And I remembered actually the issue of the New Yorker when this poem came out and how I kind of tore it out of the

magazine and carried it around until it kind of fell apart in my hands. There was just something in the

poem for me that spoke to so many aspects of living and ways to be.

And so I think that's some of what I can say.

And Merwin himself said that Rainlight was not a rational poem, and I just love that.

Well, let's hear it.

Here's Rachel Eliza Griffiths reading Rainlight by W.S. Merwin.

Rainlight.

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