Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful you are here and I'm grateful that I will get to see many of you tonight at our Get Lit with All Of It book club event, we will be in conversation with author Adam Haslett about his novel Mothers and Sons. Plus, we'll have a special live musical performance from Spencer Peppet of The Ophelias.

It all starts at 6:00 PM tonight at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library on 5th Avenue and 40th Street. There are a few tickets left but grab them ASAP. To reserve yours, head to wnyc.org/getlit. Again, that is wnyc.org/getlit. That's coming up in just under six hours. Now let's get today's show started by kicking off Poetry Month.

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Alison Stewart: Throughout April, we're collaborating with the organization behind National Poetry Month, the American Academy of Poets. On the Academy's website, poets.org, they publish a poem a day. In April, many of the poems published are new and each was written by a different contemporary poet. We'll be featuring recorded readings of the National Poetry Month selections all month long on our show.

The series this month is curated by Willie Perdomo. Willie is a former New York State Poet Laureate. He grew up in East Harlem and he got his start in the downtown poetry scene in the 1990s like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Gathering of the Tribes. Willie Perdomo is here now to discuss the series, perform some readings, and to take your calls. Hi Willie.

Willie Perdomo: Hello. How are you doing?

Alison Stewart: I am doing well. We're going to start with a reading, a poem selected today for April 2nd. It's by Mike Tyler. You can find it on poets.org Would you introduce the poem to us before reading it?

Willie Perdomo: Sure. This poem is by Mike Tyler, and Mike was part of that early revival. As the Nuyorican Poets Cafe was founded in the mid-70s by Miguel Algarín, Miguel Pinero, Pedro Pietri, Sandra Maria Esteves, and Jesús Papoleto Meléndez. Then it had closed down and then it revived and Mike and myself, along with poets like Dael Orlandersmith, Reg E. Gaines, and Paul Beatty, were part of that revival. It's a pleasure to be reading this poem. It's called Palazzo Tartaruga.

A boy asks me

write a poem

to a boy

a poem

is a real thing

like a bike or

goggles for swimming

I’ve been remembering

turtle slow

what it’s like to

be interrupted by myself

beauty a hackney

cab of commerce

sits ahead

proud in the rickshaw

mixing up cultures geographies

biographies like AI

hanging over us

doesn’t hang

cut the gallows tumor

death is a memory

something that happens

to me before

a volcano

stares over the trees

Alison Stewart: That was Willie Perdomo reading Palazzo Tartaruga. It's by Mike Tyler. What was your process for selecting poems for the National Poetry Month series on poets.org?

Willie Perdomo: I think in keeping with the Academy's level of capaciousness and democracy, I think that I wanted to make room at the table for as many poets as possible, most of whom are young, most of whom are emerging. But I was even more intentional about soliciting poems from poets who had been in my workshops for the last 15 to 20 years. These are youth poets who are now adults who were, in my words, Everything I Love workshop at Urban Word NYC and in my workshop at the VONA writing workshops, Cave Canem, CantoMundo. I was really intentional about revisiting some of these poets who had made some impact and really wanted them to have a chance to emerge and get some shine.

Alison Stewart: Were there themes that you wanted to touch on with this [unintelligible 00:04:54] [crosstalk]

Willie Perdomo: Not really. I think you have poems that celebrate cities like Detroit and Oakland, poems, respectively, by Brittany Rogers and Barbara Jane Reyes. You have poems about fatherhood by Carlos Andres Gomez that you'll hear throughout the month. But really, I think it's about voices that appeal to my sense of truth and beauty, speaking to injustice, speaking about the understanding of memory, history. It wasn't a theme that I was necessarily focused on as much as it was a wide array of voices.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, are you a poetry fan? Who is a poet that you admire? Or maybe you have a favorite poem that you always like to revisit, we'd love to hear about it. Call 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call us or you can text us that poem. What poem do you especially like to lean on during uncertain times? Or maybe the spring weather recalls certain poem that gives you hope? Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC 212-433-9692. You can call or text us or you can write to us on social media @allofitwnyc. My guest is Willie Perdomo, a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss the series he' curated for poets.org. You mentioned that all the poets on this April series, they're contemporary. They have written new work. Why was it important to have new work or new voices represented?

Willie Perdomo: I think because poetry is ever expanding, and it gives you a sense of the range of the voice of America, really, the voice of we inhabit in terms of how we go about accessing our souls. I think any poet who has an unpublished poem and gets a chance to publish that poem, it's a very exciting time for poets. Most of the poets that I chose are young or emerging and coming into their own. They just published their first book, and this is a great opportunity to highlight a variety of voices that are throughout the country.

Alison Stewart: Willie, when did you first become aware of or interested in poetry?

Willie Perdomo: Oh, that's a whole nother conversation, I think. I think my mother was a documentarian, and she kept journals. I think the act of writing and that she really wanted to-- It was a matter of saying, I am alive in this world, and I am documenting what I see, and I am seeing my son grow, and I am seeing my grandson grow, and I need to put this down to make sure that it was real. I think that would be the first impetus for me to become a writer.

Then after that, it becomes the collective act of telling a story on a stoop in East Harlem, where I grew up, and how that story mutated and then contracted, and then it traveled down the block and down to the candy store. Then I saw a poet named Ed Randolph. I attended Friends Seminary in Manhattan, and he read these poems out loud during an assembly period, one that was dedicated to me.

I just got really emotional, and next thing I knew, I was asking him, like, I want you to be my mentor. I didn't ask him directly, but I came up to him and said, I think I want to write poems, because poems gave me-- It gave me an access. It gave me a language that I did not have to parse out chaos, confusion, and conflict. There's so many stories that I can relay about the makings of the young poet, Willie Perdomo.

Alison Stewart: I was going to ask, poetry can be a vulnerable medium to write in. Was that ever an issue for you? Or maybe that was the relief for you?

Willie Perdomo: I think it was more the relief. Because I had support from my homies in the neighborhood, from my family. I didn't feel as vulnerable. Then once I went downtown, I encountered a bunch of young poets who were all doing the same thing. In many ways, Alison, you were part of that generation. Your correspond was really important, and the news that you were bringing our way. There was exciting music like A Tribe Called Quest and all this experimentation going on with poetry and abstraction and jazz and hip hop. It was a really exciting time to be a poet and claim oneself to be a poet.

Alison Stewart: That it was. Let's talk to Dawn from Park Slope. Hi, Dawn. Thanks for calling All Of It. You are on the air.

Dawn: Hi. The reason I'm calling is because I have a hard time understanding poetry. I've heard a lot of poets on your show and on other shows, and I've studied poetry, but still, it would be great for me to maybe get a little more insight to what the poem means. When a guest reads a poem, go inside a poem a little bit so I can understand. I don't know why I don't. I guess I'm too literal. Maybe I'm looking too closely to defining what each word means or however. Do you have any advice-

Alison Stewart: Dawn, that's a really--

Dawn: -about understanding poetry?

Alison Stewart: This is a great question for you, Willie, as you are a teacher.

Willie Perdomo: I teach, and I think when most people hear the word poetry, they're looking for the exit sign, basically.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Willie Perdomo: Part of that is because we're so caught up in what a poem means. I think it might have been T.S. Eliot. He says, is that meaning is what you throw at the guard dog while you go inside and rob the house. Basically, that meaning is a distraction. You really want to be in a situation where if you encounter a poem, all you need to do is hang on to one line, and from that line, it will expand. Where is it that you are entering the poem? Where is it are you embracing that feeling of ambiguity, confusion?

Which is a valid entry point for anyone who is experiencing a poem for the first time or reading it over. But I would recommend just hang on to one line. Like, say To Be in Love by Gwendolyn Brooks. I always hang on to that line where she says, to be in love is to be the beautiful half of a golden hurt. That's the line that I hang onto and say, "What do I associate with that particular line?" That would be my suggestion. Like, get away from the meaning and then move toward the feeling.

Alison Stewart: Let's Talk to Carrie, who's calling in from Greenwich Village. Hi, Carrie. Thanks so much for making time to talk to us on All Of It. I hear you want to read a poem.

Carrie: Oh, thank you very much. I wanted to read a couple of stanzas from Sylvia Townsend Warner's poem which is called John Krask's Country. John Krask was a sailor who had a head injury and became a folk artist. He did needlework. This is when folk artistry was not yet known in the '40s. It's a short poem which deals with each stanza. 1. It deals with love, building, eating, and grieving. A whole life.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's hear it.

Carrie: It's very plain speech. It starts out, you cannot love here as you can love inland, where love grows easy as a pig or a South Wall fruit. I don't think pigs appear much in poetry, but it's a beautiful image, isn't it? Then there's a lot of repetition. It goes;

You cannot eat here as you can eat inland

A man can't do with less than six herring for breakfast

and something stronger than tea if he is to hold fast

against a wind blowing from the North Pole

and only salt water between

And you cannot grieve here as you can grieve inland

where the dead lie sweetly labeled like jams in the grocer store

You must blink at the sea till your face is scarlet and your eyes sore

with the wind blowing from the North Pole and only salt water between

Carrie: That's how it ends.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Carrie. Hey, Willie, we've got somebody who wants to talk a little bit about another poet that he likes. It's your son, [laughter] Neruda, who's online, too. Hi, Neruda.

Neruda: Hey, what's going on? Dad, I just wanted to call in. You talked about finding a meaning for a poem, but for me, every time I listen to your poem, that's my heart right there. It really speaks to me. I wanted to read it to you while you're on air. I hope you don't mind.

Willie Perdomo: Oh, I don't mind at all, kid. Alison, when Neruda was a kid, he came back home one day and told me, "Dad, I write the poems that bite back." That's been my aesthetic ever since. Go ahead, kid.

Neruda: All right.

We used to say,

That’s my heart right there.

As if to say,

Don’t mess with her right there.

As if, don’t even play,

That’s a part of me right there.

In other words, okay okay,

That’s the start of me right there.

As if, come that day,

That’s the end of me right there.

As if, push come to shove,

I would fend for her right there.

As if, come what may,

I would lie for her right there.

Willie Perdomo: Bravo.

Alison Stewart: Neruda, what do you like about that poem?

Neruda: I don't know. My dad and my mom, all my family, they mean a lot to me. For that poem, it just speaks to what I would do for my family. I would do anything. I love my family to death. I love my dad to death, too.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. We really appreciate that. My guest is Willie Perdomo. He's a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss a series he's curated on poets.org. We want to hear your favorite poem, a poem that means something to you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Did you know he was going to call in, Willie?

Willie Perdomo: No, I did not. I think he checked to see if he was on the right station, but I didn't know that he was going to call in. We named him Neruda for a reason, so I that's--

Alison Stewart: Pablo Nerodo. Yes.

Willie Perdomo: Right. [chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Love that. You're going to read another poem for us. Spring Night by Sara Teasdale.

Willie Perdomo: This is a poem is in the public domain. This wasn't necessarily part of my curation, but it's called Spring Night by Sara Teasdale:

The park is filled with night and fog,

The veils are drawn about the world,

The drowsy lights along the paths

Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets,

gold and gleaming the misty lake,

The mirrored lights like sunken swords,

Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be

Here with this beauty over me?

My throat should ache with praise, and I

Should kneel in joy beneath the sky.

O, Beauty are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love,

With youth, a singing voice and eyes

To take earth's wonder with surprise?

Why have I put off my pride,

Why am I unsatisfied,—

I for whom the pensive night

Binds her cloudy hair with light,—

I, for whom all beauty burns

Like incense in a million urns?

O, Beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love?

Willie Perdomo: Wow. Those two last questions are tough. Those are tough.

Alison Stewart: Those are tough.

Willie Perdomo: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Susan from the East Village. Hi, Susan. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Susan: Oh, hi. Thank you. I wanted to talk about a poem that I read when I was pretty young. Even though it was so simple, it stayed with me for years because I think of its exuberance. Are you familiar with Child on Top of a Greenhouse by Theodore Roethke?

Willie Perdomo: I'm familiar with Roethke, My Papa's Last Waltz, I think, if I remember. It's a beautiful poem about a young boy dancing with his father.

Alison Stewart: What's the poem you're going to read?

Susan: Pardon me.

Alison Stewart: I understand you were going to read a different poem, though.

Susan: Oh, yes. But it's interesting because they both have to do with a childhood memory. The Papa's Waltz one is more famous, but this one really struck me. It's Child on Top of a Greenhouse. Do you want me to read it?

Alison Stewart: Sure, go for it.

Susan: The wind billowing out the seat of my britches,

My feet crackling splinters of glass and dried putty,

The half-grown chrysanthemums staring up like accusers,

Up through the streaked glass, flashing with sunlight,

A few white clouds all rushing eastward,

A line of elms plunging and tossing like horses,

And everyone, everyone pointing up and shouting!

Susan: He was in a dangerous place, I guess, on top of the greenhouse. All the adults realized he was there. But that moment of being on top of this glass mountain and all the images that are affecting his senses and the exuberance and maybe in only realizing the danger, but how exhilarating it all was.

Alison Stewart: Excellent poem. Thank you so much for calling in. Willie, it was interesting to hear her describe the poem because she described all the senses that you use when you read.

Willie Perdomo: I think that's our first entry point again. I think outside the feeling is that the sensory. The aspect to any poem which is really where verse begins with what you see, what you smell, what you hear. One of the reasons I love walking in New York City because it's just one big sensory explosion. Most of those images are like springboards into a larger definition of what is love, what is fatherhood, what is beauty, what it means to witness. The image cannot be discounted from a poem, even though there is room for abstraction and statement.

Alison Stewart: It is Poetry Month. April is Poetry Month. Do you have a favorite poet? Do you have a favorite poem that you want to read to us? Our number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll have more with Willie Perdomo and more of your calls after the break. This is All Of It.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Willie Perdomo, a former New York State Poet Laureate. He's here to discuss a series he's curated on poets.org that will feature one new poem a day, each written by a different contemporary poet. We'll be airing some of those poems in the show throughout April, which is National Poetry Month. We are also taking your calls.

Willie, I wanted to ask you about a class you teach, Beats Rhythm and Narrative class. It talks about storytelling and hip-hop. Since you came of age in New York during the golden age of hip-hop, how do you think hip-hop has influenced poetry?

Willie Perdomo: Oh, exponentially. There's the idea of improvisation, rhyme, structure, storytelling. I came of age with some of the greatest storytellers of hip hop, namely Slick Rick was was one of them. Of course, I'm aging myself when I say that. But I think what excited me most about hip hop was the level of creativity and what we used to call the cipher, which is to say that you would walk down to the corner or in front of the candy store and see a circle of kids who were just versifying off the top, as we used to say.

Some of these rhymes were intricate. They had meter, they had fantasy, and some of them had great, great lies. Hip hop for me was an overall structure as is jazz, as is sisai music for me, that informs the way I approach language and rhythm and the idea of language having a sonic charge. But hip hop was for all of us who were coming up in the '90s and starting to write poetry.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Teela in Paramus. Hi, Teela. Thank you so much for calling All Of It. You are on the air.

Teela: Hi. Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I hear you great.

Teela: Hello? Okay, great. I'm calling about a poem. When I was actually in school, in elementary school, long, long time ago, we had to memorize lots and lots of poems. I still remember mostly all of them, at least the first five or six lines. But this one I happened to fall in love with in college, and it was by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I love it because as a little girl, I used to go to a penny candy store, and with my nickel, I got to pick out my candy. The rhythm and the mood of this poem, I think is terrific. Do you want me to read it?

Alison Stewart: Sure. Go for it.

Teela: The pennycandystore beyond the El

is where I first

fell in love

with unreality

Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom

of that september afternoon

A cat upon the counter moved among

the licorice sticks

and tootsie rolls

and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in

Her hair was rainy

Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling

and they cried

Too soon! too soon!

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling in. Let's talk to Eli. Hi, Eli, calling from Brooklyn. How are you?

Eli: I'm good. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing well. What are you going to tell us about what poem?

Eli: I wanted to read a poem by my mom, Judy Katz, who published a book of poems called How News Travels a couple of years ago. Her first book. I'd love to read it to you.

Speaker 3: Go for it.

Eli: How News Travels.

I used to imagine it like birds flying.

Or a crisp white envelope.

Until now I never conceived of it

nestled inside me, moving how I move.

I step out of the house, forgetting

I am wearing my mother’s robe.

It is before dawn; nothing stirs.

No jogger or paperboy, not even the birds

keeping track of things. Am I wearing slippers?

I must be. I move at a steady clip

past the quiet houses on their unlit lawns.

I am taller than usual, held up, afraid

of sudden movement, the swing of my arms.

I walk as if my whole body were filled with eggs,

and my task to deliver them unbroken.

And when I reach my brother’s house,

there through the window he is making his way

to the front door to open it

to the news of our mother’s death

that I alone have carried in the street

and can finally set down.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in.

Eli: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: We got this great text that says, "That was beautiful. Your guest son calling in to read his dad's poem. You can tell how much he loves him. That got me smiling." Thank you. "In high school, made it to the Nuyorican to take in some readings with friends. Felt like we had stumbled onto the real deal. Definitely left its mark on us. Your guest is great. His expressive feel for words is absolutely on point." With that lead into, I'd like to hear you read one of your poems.

Willie Perdomo: I'm going to read a poem called They Won't Find Us in Books, which is from a book that I wrote called The Crazy Bunch, published in 2019. Just to give you a little context, the book is a fictional chronicle of the lives of five young black and Puerto Rican men from East Harlem, the dawn of the hip hop era in the '90s. It takes place over the course of a weekend. By the time we get to this particular poem, the five have been reduced to three because of tragedy. This is called They Won't Find Us in Books.

And after we officially gained entry into the Brotherhood of

Bad Motherfuckers, what could our mothers do but lose

sleep, wake into prayer, prepare herbs & apples, cursive the

names of our enemies on loose-leaf & let their names dust

in the sunlight.

Now everything is clean, rezoned & paved, tenements

abandoned like wack parties, what is left for us to do but

summon bullies from their graves & liberate ourselves

from influence.

Gone as the old spots near the takeout, old flames where we

used to make out, the spots where the light used to fade

out, and the letters we wrote from burning buildings.

Our shoulders were made of stone, our evil was translucent.

Turn us into mortals, so we can cry without judgment,

surrender our cool, and watch us morph into men.

Let it be known that we chased Killer Dillers before the cans got

kicked for good.

We were made from repeating blocks.

Holler if you hear us.

There was never a once upon a time because all it takes is one

person to get away with it, to get away & get over, to get

some & get up, here we go, c’mon, here we go.

You our history, you said.

If being free means burning a few things, then play that number

for us straight.

The corner was between us & the world, and sometimes you just

needed to be okay with not telling.

If anyone asks you about your destiny, don’t explain.

Maybe this is the story we need to turn ourselves into music,

bass & bully, a string pulling at both ends.

They won’t find us in books, you used to say.

Everybody say, Yeah, and you don’t stop.

We practiced our lives in lobbies & layaway, ganders & goofs,

boosting lines from the radio, breaking dynamite styles.

We were god bodies, we had God in our bodies.

That’s what Brother Lo used to say, he used to say,

A man can stand on the corner long enough to

see a dream etched on a Herb’s forehead; to see

desperation exit from a subway station; to see

a traffic hero come back to reclaim his

city,

so we downloaded his bars & gems, and, no doubt, when it was

time to tell our story, out would come fire & spit.

Alison Stewart: That was Willie Perdomo reading from They Won't Find Us in Books. When you are teaching Poetry, what's an important lesson to keep in mind for a young poet or someone who's not a poet yet, somebody who just wants to write poetry about how to take that first step?

Willie Perdomo: Voice. For me, it always starts with voice. who is it on the other side of that poem? For instance, the poem that you just heard was definitely written to someone that I had probably grown up with in East Harlem. I'm addressing that person directly. That means that it dictates my syntax, my rhythm, my imagery, my sense of wordplay, my symbolism.

When I work with young poets, specifically in creative writing workshops, it always begins with the questions that they might have about how to define things like truth and beauty. But also to understand that there's always one person out there that is listening. That person might be your cousin. It might be your son. It might be a radio host. It might be Ms. Mary who's sitting on the stoop.

In many ways, it determines how you approach relaying that poem. The thing you want to really get to an emerging young poet is to get away from trying to sound like a poet and move more toward the idea of authenticity, what that means in your world. I always encourage my students to use the-- I don't want to say slang, but that's the word. The way words are put together, only because that language is so innovative and constantly in transformation. For me, it always starts with voice.

Alison Stewart: I think we only have one more slot of someone who called in that could get on the air. Thanks to everybody who called. We're going to go for Janet from Rockland County. Hi, Janet. Thank you for calling.

Janet: Hi, how are you? Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: I got you. Yes. Let's go.

Janet: Great. I love Mary Oliver. She's just wonderful. This is a poem called Mornings at Blackwater.Mornings at Blackwater

For years, every morning, I drank

from Blackwater Pond.

It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,

the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me

from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is

that the past is the past,

and the present is what your life is,

and you are capable

of choosing what that will be,

darling citizen.

So come to the pond,

or the river of your imagination,

or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.

And live

your life

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much. We're living in an uncertain present, Willie. Why is poetry useful at a time of uncertainty?

Willie Perdomo: I think in keeping with the Poem a Day series from the Academy of American Poets, they really subscribe to what William Carlos Williams said about poetry, that it's difficult to get the news from poems, yet most people die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. In other words, if you are really in tune and present to your life, there has to be a sense of poetry that informs that life. All these poems going out day by day are just little pieces of life and democracy and witness and celebration and joy. All those things need to be part of our national fabric if we are going to prosper, I think.

Alison Stewart: My guest was Willie Perdomo, former New York State Poet Laureate. He has curated a series on poets.org which will feature one new poem a day every day during April. It's National Poetry Month. Thanks to all of our callers who called in. I think we'll do this again. We'll have another poetry slam on the air. Willie, it was so nice to meet you.

Willie Perdomo: Thank you. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to talk with you, Allison.