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

We have a special program for you today.

This is a moment of historic change in the world and the United States, amid a pandemic that's only just begun to reshape our society.

We've seen weeks of massive civil rights uprisings and demands for justice in the

wake of continued racist police killings of black people. Such a moment calls a radical imagination,

and today I'm excited to talk with three leading American poets about the state, a contemporary

poetry, and its role in our times. Tracy K. Smith served two terms of the U.S. poet lauret.

Her poetry has also won an Anisfield Wolf Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Her latest collection

is Wade in the Water. Her translations with Chang Tai B, a poems by the late Chinese poet Yilet

Yilet will be published this fall, My Name Will Grow Wide Like a

a Tree.

Marilyn Nelson writes poetry for adults, young adults, and children. Her honors include a Ruth

Lilly Poetry Prize, NSK Newsstat Prize for Children's Literature, and a Frost Medal from

the Poetry Society of America. Her new books, Papa's

Free Day Party and Lubia's Quiet Roar, are forthcoming. Terrence Hayes, a former MacArthur

Fellow, has received a Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism, a Hurston Wright Award for Poetry,

and a National Book Award in Poetry. His most recent books are to float in the space between

a life and work in conversation with the life and work of Etheridge Knight and American Sonnets for my past and future assassin.

Tracy, Marilyn Terrence, welcome. Thank you all so much for being here.

Thank you for you.

Thanks. So I thought we'd start off the conversation by reading and hearing some of your work that's

been published in The New Yorker.

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