Advertisement
transcript
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Margaret Renkl. And I’m a contributing writer for “The New York Times” Opinion, where I often write about nature and the climate. April is National Poetry Month. And recently, I interviewed the poet laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. OK, now it is recording. [LAUGHS] Hi, Ada. Thank you for doing this, Ada.
Before she became the poet laureate, I have been reading her poems.
“Or their plumage glistening with salt air,
their gular sacs saying, You are magnificent. You are also magnificent.
It makes me want to give all my loves the adjectives they deserve—
You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.”
I just think that she has this really beautiful way of bringing together the natural world, the very specific language of poetry, and her own heart.
Ada Limón has edited a new collection called “You Are Here, Poetry in the Natural World.” I just think it’s the perfect way to mark National Poetry Month in a time of climate change and great biodiversity loss.
And I think she makes a subtle but powerful case for how poetry can heal the Earth itself.
You said on the Library of Congress’s website that your aim, or at least one of your aims, with this anthology is to reimagine what nature poetry is during this particularly urgent moment on our planet. How do you think most people define nature poetry? And how do you?
I think that at least the nature poems that I read when I was growing up as a young poet was almost all by the Romantics. And oftentimes, it was a young gentleman walking to a mountain and having an epiphany.
[LAUGHTER]
And it also felt like there was a level in which there was a deep separation between nature and the self. And there was, for the lack of a better word, a colonizer mindset, I think, in some of those poems. And when I thought about nature poems, I thought, but we all have nature poems within us, every single one of us.
You don’t include one of your own poems in the book, but you are a nature poet. Can you talk a little bit— is it possible to articulate what it means for you, as a poet, to find the right words for an experience of the natural world or your thoughts about the natural world?
Yeah, I think there’s a level in which you can read a poem about a snake or a rat and suddenly feel differently about those animals. I still remember where I was when I read Lucille Clifton poem about a cockroach. And it made me change how I feel about insects, how we were all trying to survive on some level. And I think that poetry can’t do that for everything.
You may hate spiders, and a poem may not [LAUGHS] allow you to love them. But I do think that it can allow for a different kind of attention and relationship with the natural world by reading those poems.
Even if it’s just— it makes you see that another person doesn’t hate spiders.
Yeah.
Maybe you just revisit it.
Yeah.
Because there’s this immensely accurate and profoundly beautiful language assigned to it.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I absolutely agree.
I’m thinking about the urgency of this moment. And so much of the urgency, it’s not just the risks that we face or that our planet faces or the losses we’ve already incurred. It’s also this kind of terrifying feet-dragging that we’re seeing on the part of so many politicians and business leaders and industry. And yet some of these poems are just shot through with joy, with beauty, with love.
And I wondered if you had any advice about how to hold those two poles— the grief and the fear— but also the way the natural world has of rebounding or regenerating when we give it a chance. How do we hold both of those two things close?
I find that poetry is a place for that. It is a place for the complicated feeling. And it is an interesting time. You know, if you talk to a young, 10-year-old girl and ask her about the planet, she will express anxiety and worry. And that’s where we are. And I do think that we have to have hope. But we also have to be clear-eyed and have a place for grief. And those things need to work together.
And if we don’t grieve, we numb. And if we don’t have joy and we don’t have hope, we give up. And those are two of the most dangerous things we can do right now. And I also think that they are the easiest things. The easiest thing to do is give up. And I absolutely think that this is not the time to give up. And so I think poetry holds a place for both the grief as well as the hope, as well as the desire for significant change.
I love that answer. As you know, it is very close to my heart. But I think that your form is much more plastic. It’s easier to make that case in a poem because you don’t have to make a case. It’s not an op-ed. It’s a truth. It’s just a statement of truth.
Yeah. I always say that poetry, it’s not the place for answers. It’s the place for questions. And we need to keep asking the big questions, including, What are we going to do? and, How are we going to move together?
Poetry has always been in love with mystery, resistant to the thesis statement. Poetry doesn’t want to make an argument. Poetry wants to explore the uncertainty and sit in a kind of quiet resignation, maybe? Or maybe just pondering the things that, in our more prosaic life, we have this impulse to try to sort out and solve.
“It’s no secret that when I am trying to find myself, trying to ground myself, I stare at trees. I first see them as a green blur of soothing movement, something distant trembling in unison, but then I look at the leaves, remembering the names. From where I sit now, I can see the magnolia, the three cypress trees, the hackberry, and the old mulberry tree that drapes its tired branches over everything like it wants to give up but won’t.
Watching them makes me feel at once more human and less human. I become aware that I am in a body, yes, but it is a body connected to these trees, and we are breathing together. You might not know this, but poems are like trees in this way. They let us breathe together.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
transcript
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
My name is Margaret Renkl. And I’m a contributing writer for “The New York Times” Opinion, where I often write about nature and the climate. April is National Poetry Month. And recently, I interviewed the poet laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. OK, now it is recording. [LAUGHS] Hi, Ada. Thank you for doing this, Ada.
Before she became the poet laureate, I have been reading her poems.
“Or their plumage glistening with salt air,
their gular sacs saying, You are magnificent. You are also magnificent.
It makes me want to give all my loves the adjectives they deserve—
You are Resplendent. You are Radiant. You are Sublime.”
I just think that she has this really beautiful way of bringing together the natural world, the very specific language of poetry, and her own heart.
Ada Limón has edited a new collection called “You Are Here, Poetry in the Natural World.” I just think it’s the perfect way to mark National Poetry Month in a time of climate change and great biodiversity loss.
And I think she makes a subtle but powerful case for how poetry can heal the Earth itself.
You said on the Library of Congress’s website that your aim, or at least one of your aims, with this anthology is to reimagine what nature poetry is during this particularly urgent moment on our planet. How do you think most people define nature poetry? And how do you?
I think that at least the nature poems that I read when I was growing up as a young poet was almost all by the Romantics. And oftentimes, it was a young gentleman walking to a mountain and having an epiphany.
[LAUGHTER]
And it also felt like there was a level in which there was a deep separation between nature and the self. And there was, for the lack of a better word, a colonizer mindset, I think, in some of those poems. And when I thought about nature poems, I thought, but we all have nature poems within us, every single one of us.
You don’t include one of your own poems in the book, but you are a nature poet. Can you talk a little bit— is it possible to articulate what it means for you, as a poet, to find the right words for an experience of the natural world or your thoughts about the natural world?
Yeah, I think there’s a level in which you can read a poem about a snake or a rat and suddenly feel differently about those animals. I still remember where I was when I read Lucille Clifton poem about a cockroach. And it made me change how I feel about insects, how we were all trying to survive on some level. And I think that poetry can’t do that for everything.
You may hate spiders, and a poem may not [LAUGHS] allow you to love them. But I do think that it can allow for a different kind of attention and relationship with the natural world by reading those poems.
Even if it’s just— it makes you see that another person doesn’t hate spiders.
Yeah.
Maybe you just revisit it.
Yeah.
Because there’s this immensely accurate and profoundly beautiful language assigned to it.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I absolutely agree.
I’m thinking about the urgency of this moment. And so much of the urgency, it’s not just the risks that we face or that our planet faces or the losses we’ve already incurred. It’s also this kind of terrifying feet-dragging that we’re seeing on the part of so many politicians and business leaders and industry. And yet some of these poems are just shot through with joy, with beauty, with love.
And I wondered if you had any advice about how to hold those two poles— the grief and the fear— but also the way the natural world has of rebounding or regenerating when we give it a chance. How do we hold both of those two things close?
I find that poetry is a place for that. It is a place for the complicated feeling. And it is an interesting time. You know, if you talk to a young, 10-year-old girl and ask her about the planet, she will express anxiety and worry. And that’s where we are. And I do think that we have to have hope. But we also have to be clear-eyed and have a place for grief. And those things need to work together.
And if we don’t grieve, we numb. And if we don’t have joy and we don’t have hope, we give up. And those are two of the most dangerous things we can do right now. And I also think that they are the easiest things. The easiest thing to do is give up. And I absolutely think that this is not the time to give up. And so I think poetry holds a place for both the grief as well as the hope, as well as the desire for significant change.
I love that answer. As you know, it is very close to my heart. But I think that your form is much more plastic. It’s easier to make that case in a poem because you don’t have to make a case. It’s not an op-ed. It’s a truth. It’s just a statement of truth.
Yeah. I always say that poetry, it’s not the place for answers. It’s the place for questions. And we need to keep asking the big questions, including, What are we going to do? and, How are we going to move together?
Poetry has always been in love with mystery, resistant to the thesis statement. Poetry doesn’t want to make an argument. Poetry wants to explore the uncertainty and sit in a kind of quiet resignation, maybe? Or maybe just pondering the things that, in our more prosaic life, we have this impulse to try to sort out and solve.
“It’s no secret that when I am trying to find myself, trying to ground myself, I stare at trees. I first see them as a green blur of soothing movement, something distant trembling in unison, but then I look at the leaves, remembering the names. From where I sit now, I can see the magnolia, the three cypress trees, the hackberry, and the old mulberry tree that drapes its tired branches over everything like it wants to give up but won’t.
Watching them makes me feel at once more human and less human. I become aware that I am in a body, yes, but it is a body connected to these trees, and we are breathing together. You might not know this, but poems are like trees in this way. They let us breathe together.”
[MUSIC PLAYING]
By Margaret Renkl and Ada Limón
Produced by Kristina Samulewski
In a time of climate crisis, can poetry help us save the planet? In this audio essay, the contributing Opinion writer Margaret Renkl speaks with Ada Limón, the U.S. poet laureate, to understand how the written word can help the natural world.
(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 24 hours of publication in the audio player above.)
Thoughts? Email us at theopinions@nytimes.com.
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Kristina Samulewski. It was edited by Alison Bruzek, Kaari Pitkin and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Isaac Jones and Efim Shapiro. Mixing and original music by Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.
Advertisement
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Rami G Khouri
Mort Laitner
Donald Low
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
Nikkei Editorial
visit website
