Okay, so does this sound like you? You love NPR's podcasts. You wish you could get more of all your favorite shows and you want to support NPR's mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR Plus bundle. Learn more at plus.npr.org.

This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. On this day of Jimmy Carter's funeral, which has also been declared a national day of morning,

we listened back to more excerpts of the interviews I recorded with him over the years.

At 100 years old, Carter was the oldest living former president in American history,

with one of the longest and most productive public lives after leaving the White House.

Those post-presidency years were devoted to public service.

He and his wife Rosalind teamed up with Habitat for Humanity, building or

repairing thousands of homes in the U.S. and other countries around the world, including Mexico,

South Africa, Haiti, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines. He flew around the world to war zones

to mediate violent conflicts and monitor elections and fledgling democracies.

And Carter wrote several memoirs about his presidency, his childhood, his deep religious faith,

his reflections on getting older, and life after leaving office. That gave me the opportunity

to interview him several times. We'll start with the side of Jimmy Carter, most

Americans were unaware of when he was in the White House, his lifelong interest in and love

of poetry. When we spoke in 1995, he'd just published a collection of his poems titled

Always a Reckoning. Carter was the first former president to publish a book of poems.

What do you think the assumptions are that people make when they hear a former president is also

a poet? Well, I think it's been a rare thing in history to have a president who was a published poet.

I imagine a lot of folks that have been in the White

House have written a poem or two. And hid them. And hid them, yes, or share them with maybe a wife

on, you know, on Mother's Day or something of that kind. But I think to write poetry seriously

is probably considered to be incompatible with being a politician who's been in the White House.

...