The Poetry Magazine Podcast

• Wake, Butterfly: Plant with Mei-mei Berssenbrugge

  In the third episode, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge invites listeners to observe a plant and receive its messages._____Matsuo Bashō wrote:Wake, butterfly—it’s late, we’ve milesto go together.Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié._____Here’s an edited version of Berssenbrugge’s prompt:Choose a plant and observe it with care for five minutes and intensity. Now, draw the plant with a pencil, shading from the center of the plant outward rather than outlining the plant. Now sit with the plant again, opening yourself to what the plant says to you. Now put the plant away, and for fifteen minutes write a visual description of your plant. There will be an interweave or seepage between perception, memory, and imagination. Now, as a stream of consciousness, quickly write down all the things that you receive from the plant. If you imagine your plant has said something to you, they did say that. The final part of the exercise is to compose an essay, a song, a piece of prose or poetry combining your written phenomenological description of the plant and your reception of messages from your plant. _____The poem read in this episode is “Consciousness Self-Learns,” by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, from A Treatise on Stars, copyright ©2020 by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

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• Wake, Butterfly: Beyond (So What) with Edward Salem

  In the second episode, Edward Salem invites listeners to find what’s beyond “so what.”_____Matsuo Bashō wrote:Wake, butterfly—it’s late, we’ve milesto go together.Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié._____Here’s an edited version of Salem’s prompt:Write a poem that responds to the question, “What is beyond so what?” You can replace “so what” with “eternity.” What is beyond the void? What is beyond the body? What is beyond your little human life? What is beyond the life cycle of the universe? _____The poem Salem reads in the episode, “The Palestinian Chair,” is from his book Monk Fruit (Nightboat Books, 2025).

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• Wake, Butterfly: Orb Weaver with Gabrielle Calvocoressi

  In the first episode, Gabrielle Calvocoressi invites listeners to make a web._____Matsuo Bashō wrote: Wake, butterfly—it’s late, we’ve milesto go together. Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. The series is produced by Rachel James with sound design by Axel Kacoutié._____Here’s an edited version of Calvocoressi’s prompt: Make a web. Use whatever form of web making comes naturally to your orb-weaving self. Could you make a web that connects one part of your room or the place where you are to another? This can be theoretical, spiritual, pragmatic; it can be tactile, it can be sonic, it can be visual, or just the deep web of memory.  Could you make enough space for a ghost to come through?  What’s your web? Get as intricate as you want. Weave and weave, and just let your mind make the form. Or you want to get physical? Find yourself a ball of string and whatever mobility means to you. This can be done in bed. This can be done alone or with others. Construct a web.  You can stop right there. You don’t have to make a poem. Nobody has to make a poem. But if you want to keep going, you could make a poem that contains all the things that you caught in that web. Could you make a form called an orb weaver? What would that look like? What would your orb weaver look like? 

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• Kiki Petrosino and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Crestfallenness, Cookbooks, and More

  This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Kiki Petrosino, who has published five elegant and remarkable books, all with Sarabande, including the memoir Bright (2022) and the poetry collection White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia (2020). Petrosino speaks about crestfallenness and her new essay in the October issue of Poetry, “On Crestfallenness: A Pilgrim, Not a Tractor,” which appeared as part of the Hard Feelings series. She also talks about having her mother join her for her research, teaching across languages, and her love of cookbooks and the stories they tell. With thanks to Danelle Cadena Deulen for the clip of her reading Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem “Closing Time; Iskandariya” on the podcast Lit from the Basement. And to Sarabande Books, Inc. for permission to include Kiki Petrosino’s poem “Pergatorio” from Witch Wife (2020).

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• Kimiko Hahn and Cindy Juyoung Ok on Mentoring Your Younger Poet-Self and More

  This week, Cindy Juyoung Ok speaks with Kimiko Hahn, who won the 2023 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and who is featured in the October 2023 issue of Poetry. Hahn talks about how her work has changed over the years, including her current love of form, and how she’s been mentoring her younger self while putting together her forthcoming new and selected, The Ghost Forest (W.W. Norton). She also discusses being wrong about Elizabeth Bishop, not getting an MFA, and what it was like studying at the University of Iowa as an undergraduate while the graduate program was filled with now-canonical poets like Rita Dove, Jorie Graham, Tess Gallagher, and others. Hahn shares two of her incredible poems from the October issue with listeners.

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