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.

We're more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic that has altered life immeasurably, for each of us as individuals and for our shared society.

Even so, students of history will realize that ours is actually a

precedent in time as we endure the twin pandemics of COVID and racism. For some of us,

the present patterns are all too familiar. We're approaching the centennial of the Tulsa Massacre,

with its destruction of lives and Black Wall Street. And just over a century ago, the Red Summer of 1919 was marked by widespread attacks

on black people at the same time that the influence of pandemic was ravaging the country.

As we've struggled today to reimagine the ways we inhabit the world separately and together,

we've also witnessed a

recurrence of very public racism and violence, specifically.

We've seen a surge in racist attacks, harassment, and discrimination against Asian-American

and Pacific Islander communities from New York to Atlanta and beyond that has left many

shaken.

Many have also spoken out and organized using the hashtag stop Asian hate.

What's poetry's part in marking this moment?

In a moment that calls for us to mourn those we have lost to hate

and to honor the rich traditions that have long endured against impression, what better tool than poetry to help us grieve, resist, celebrate?

We asked such a question last year with three prominent African-American poets at the height of the crisis,

and today I'm excited to talk with and listen to four renowned writers about Asian American Poetics

and the role of poetry in our tumultuous times.

Kamiko Hahn, a distinguished professor at Queens College City University of New York,

...