That Back-to-School Feeling

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3:03And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello, my friends. Hello. Hey. Critics, hi. Well, Labor Day has come and gone and now here we are. Back to school time. Historically, I'm curious. What are your feelings about the first day of school? I love the first day of school. Really always? Always have. Yeah. My mother, shut up to my mother, obsessed with two things over everything. School and the fall. First through fourth grade I did in Chicago when we lived there for a little bit. And I remember being on the L train and her looking down at these leaves and being like, yeah, that's first day of school weather. And I always think about that. I like that. You know, whenever, like when it really, there's a snap, I'm like, first day of school weather. So great. Yeah. Alex. Well, I'm just remembering, I also like the first day of school and my birthday is early September. So it has a new year for me, a new year for school feeling.

4:04Trying to think of specifics, I do remember starting middle school, which at the time was the start of the school. The time was the start of middle school was seventh grade, which now would seem very late. And you know, what to wear, what to wear. And I remember one girl having said, if it's above 72 degrees, everyone can wear shorts. And just thinking. And that was gospel. What? I mean, not even. I just thought what is happening. The thing, the thing about like someone saying, oh, everybody should wear X or Y or like, oh, I heard she's going to wear this or that. And like, isn't that stupid? You know, that thing like strikes fear in my heart. Oh, no. I know. Maybe starting around fourth grade. I feel like the first, say, three years of schooling, I was probably excited in a way that wasn't kind of nervous. But I think kind of mid-elementary school. It was mostly kind of like dread and worry. I mean, listen, I was really, in many ways I loved school, especially when it came to obviously college and then graduate.

5:09Like, I love like learning. You know what I mean? I was excited. I like would look at this syllabi in advance and be like, what are the books? You know, when it was stuff that I could choose, like I was, I was like, oh, this is, you know, this is amazing. But the first day of school is so much more than that. You know, it's like, everything is so fun. It's this, it's this, who am I going to, who am I going to be this year? I'm going to sit with. Who am I going to be around? And I was afraid of math. Well, that's a whole other ball game. Was that part of your childhood? I don't know. I think so, yeah. I was like, oh shit, like. I'm still afraid of math. No, yeah, I know. But now I don't have to do math. Yeah, yeah. But I was afraid of it. So on that note, today our episode is all about the work and the pleasure of school. And we should say it is inspired by you, our listeners. In recent weeks, we've gotten a number of voice mails from teachers and also from students, which are all themed around school and education in some way or another. And that got us excited about doing an episode all about the back to school experience.

6:12So we're focusing on three voice mails. We're going to hear from a high school teacher who is desperate to combat apathy in her students. We're going to hear from a poetry student who wants help explaining to his friends why poetry is great. And from a brand new teacher just starting out, who's looking for media that gets at the high highs and below those of a teaching career. So that's today on critics at large, that back to school feeling. Okay, let's start right in. Here we go. Notebooks out. Pants up. Let's do it. Like I said, we've got three voice mails and here's the first one from Jesse in Ontario, Canada. Vincent, Naomi, Alex, what I love most about critics at large is how it reminds me of my experience as a university student, where I would get together with my peers and engage in rich, critical discussions about the texts we were reading for class and getting excited to share our insights with each other.

7:14That experience was so valuable to me that I actually chose to become a teacher myself and I now teach English literature and dramatic arts. And here's where I need your help. Over the past five years, I've noticed the apathy in my Gen Z students is rampant and nothing seems to excite them anymore. So I would like some recommendations for texts that I can use with my high school students who are in grades nine to 12. That's going to help rid them of their apathy and make them feel as excited and passionate about literature as I always felt. I'm counting on you guys. Damn, stakes are already very high. They're so high. Stakes are high. Great delivery, Jesse. I loved everything about it. Jesse, we're behind you. I feel sad, Jesse. I feel sad hearing this. I know, I know. I just feel like apathy in high school is so hard because it makes me wonder, has it always been this way?

8:19Are we trying to find something that ignites the passion of reading that has never been lit before? Or is it a kind of sputtering flame that needs to be brought back to life? Can you say more about this? Do you mean that? I just mean if someone, you know, I'm just thinking about like the thing that is so exciting about reading, I think, or was for me at that age, let's say, in high school, was just the sense of like, what, I get to do this? I get to, first of all, learn whatever I want or like read any taboo thing I want. That was the huge part of the excitement. And so if the attitude is totally the opposite, then I'm more likely to recommend something that's a little bit of like an easier access. I think Alex, and this might be a little bit of a cheap trick. What you said about taboo might be an entry point because the internet is open to our youngsters to view any number of horrific and utra.

9:23And, you know, kind of like forbidden texts and pictures and elements, you know, it's like, it's not like you need literature for that. And yet, I think sometimes young people might be surprised that literature might also deal with things that aren't just like boring or wrote or like buttoned up or, you know, what they imagine. Like school might give them, you know, I never taught high school. So I don't have that particular experience that you do Jesse, but I did teach young people. It might be, it's like only a year between 12th grade and, you know, freshman year of college. And I definitely had a lot of apathetic students. What I did when I was a teacher is I assigned, Brady Steneles is less than zero, which is his debut novel from 1985, which is about young people.

10:23But it's about basically 18 year olds in the 80s and Los Angeles who are doing very bad things, you know, they're doing a lot of drugs. There's a lot of kind of like ambiguous sex. And many of the students who I assigned this book to, they were surprised that this is like, you know, students who weren't readers were like, oh, this is, I finished this in two hours. You know, they were like, they're like, I read a book. You know, kind of that sort of thing. I think kind of like opening the door to kids who might be like books, you know, I don't want to read. I'm not interested in learning about what this means. A bit of a trick, but I think a useful one. Shock him. I'm also a little bit worried that, um, that Jesse would get fired for assigning it in high school, but maybe not. Maybe for the 12th graders. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how progressive it might be. It might be an elective, but still. Yeah, an elective. Love that. You know, also, yeah, create an elective creates my lure. Yeah.

11:27Yeah. Now we're getting into the more administrative aspects. Yes. And yes, I should say again, as I said, I never taught high school. I taught freshman, English composition, but I like that it's a shock and awe strategy. It's a shock and awe strategy. And students were consistently kind of like, whoa. Yeah, you know, that was kind of satisfying to be a satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. Love that. Vincent, do you have anything? Yeah. You know, it's, I do have ideas about content, but like just about teaching, you know, you have to be the one out on the ledge. And teaching is also an educate. It's an education in many things. You know, here's some subject matter. Here's what a poem is like. Here's how you read a novel, et cetera, but it's also an education in the emotions and in the affections. It's like, what does it mean to be excited about something? And you have to be sometimes the dork, sometimes the whatever to like get out there. Absolutely. Yeah. Establish a new frontier of you are allowed to be this excited about this kind of thing. We'll talk more about this across the episode. I'm sure, but teaching is so much a kind of performance, at least in my very limited experience of doing it.

12:36So not that limited, Vincent. Yeah. But I feel like you have an extensive teaching. Teaching one college class a week is very different than being somebody's high school English teacher. And I want to be very respectful of that difference being somebody's high school in the teacher is like. It's like Daniel DeLuis. I mean, the people that did that for me, I view with such, you know, whatever I've talked about my English teachers on this podcast before. That said, the things that I enjoyed the most when I was around that age were texts that needed a teacher precisely for this reason, right? Texts that could be opened up. I remember reading the Odyssey and my teacher at the time was talking about Odysseus is pictured as having like, like being covered with like a big leaf. She's like, you know, you know what needs a big leaf. She's like doing all this like blue talk. You know, it was like a former standup comedy. And you're like, yes. I was like, wait, oh, we could talk about this. She was working blue. She was working blue. And I was like, this is the, you know, just like those moments of surprise.

13:44I mean, that's kind of similar to that. Yeah, it's like, oh, you can books are about sex. Yeah, like lessons about drugs. Exactly. Yeah. The other, I mean, another text that I read a little bit before high school, but it's definitely like a high school level text was Richard Wright's Blackboy. And I remember being on the way to school and the older kids being like, wait till you get to the page where he like does this or you know he's talking about digs in there. You know, all this stuff and just the like, oh, man, I'm going to there's going to be an experience in the classroom. Those were my favorite, those favorite moments because even if you are a nervous classroom participant, because you know every teacher knows there's a difference between somebody who's apathetic and someone who just doesn't know how to do the thing. And you're teaching them how to do the thing too. Like you could jump in here, man. Get in. Yeah. You know, so text that coax that facility out. We're always the best to me. And also admitting what you find beautiful. Like you have to have something in there that you can say and and show them in the moment.

14:46Like, man, that's beautiful. And whether they agree or not, just to be like, this is also a place to frankly admit your like loves is I think something that people don't quickly forget regardless of their response in the moment. I think this is glorious. Yeah. Also, I mean, could you just teach the great gasp? God damn it. Yeah. You teach the best book. Best book ever. It's a great book for teaching. It's so good. Yeah. 10th grade for 10th grade. Yeah. Yeah. Just go in there and 10th grade. It's got symbols. It's got all the things we want to learn how to do. How about you? Do you think it hits in Canada? That's one question I'm having is about Canada. They they're in a moment where they need to understand Americans. No better time. I'm so sorry about that. So true. Yeah. I love everything you guys are saying because I think this is like a good formula for the reengagement. A little bit of illicit substances. A little bit of teachers passion coming in and getting everybody worked up. Just don't get fired. Just don't get fired. Yeah. Walk that line. Walk that line. Yeah. You know, I was thinking like I think a challenge is really good.

15:55Because I know there's been a kind of conventional wisdom maybe that you want to make things easy to make things appealing to someone who's not so inclined to read it. We're being hit all the time with there's a crisis in reading articles, which are really freaking me out. Yeah. Yeah. Like by all reports, reading and literacy is just totally plummeting. I was just reading one about the New York City school system where analyzing small passages of text has been prioritized and testing over a greater comprehension. So teachers were saying in this article I was reading we don't even we can't even assign a book anymore because it doesn't get us where we need to be going and it's like utterly depressing. So I was thinking back to what like you Vincent worked for me as a student one that's a little bit more of a kind of user friendly, which I don't think needs to be necessarily extensively poured over in heavy discussion, but it's just a wonderful book to read and is by a Canadian treasure is the book complicated kindness by Miriam Taves by Canada's own Miriam Taves amazing writer.

17:04And this is a book she read in 2004 it's a coming of age novel it's actually about a character named Nomi if you believe it. Nomi Nomi Niko pronounced. Yes. It's not spelled with the a it's just NOMI and she 16 and she lives in a tiny men and I town in Manitoba and she is going through a lot of shit she is there's a lot of anger and distress in her life about her family situation. She has an older sister who suddenly has just disappeared. It's not clear what's happened. She's obviously living in a very repressive religious environment because she's part of a men and I community. Miriam Taves is just one of the realest writers for me she can be so she is so funny such a funny writer but she writes about such serious stuff and of course high school students are very good at detecting bullshit. This is a writer like totally without bullshit who's not writing to pander or condescend but is actually re-inhabiting the experience of being this age in this very particular setting but it's a very satisfying novel for that reason. I could kind of see that as a door opener. Yeah door open urges get a design to get a sign go for it.

18:13In a minute some texts that get at what being a teacher is really like critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. Comprehensive, witty, speculative, critical, insightful, profound, wide ranging, hopefully doesn't take itself too too seriously. I'm David Remnik and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful, exquisite, just you know real. And we're back streaming on peacock may I present to you the award winning staff of the Toledo Truth teller. Let me just something loose. I like that. The certified fresh series returns your boss. You always like that. So what is this just a night? Oh no, this is mad.

19:17Oyster is everybody. There was a certain satisfaction on your work with someone like we could be a family. The paper news season streaming September 9 only on peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell market and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video. LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com. Flash small business. Before we get back to the conversation listeners, it's that time again. We're working on another I need a critic episode. We've come to really love this series because it gives us a chance to hear from you.

20:21Oh yeah, you all know the drill at this point, but for anyone who doesn't don't fear all you have to do is record a voice memo on your phone with a specific cultural question that we can help you with. Maybe you're looking for the perfect book to read after you just had a baby and you have no attention span or time. Maybe you want to know whether book clubs are actually helpful. Maybe you want an example in media, the movies, what have you of an actually happy relationship. I mean, who can tell really what you come up with and we can't wait to find out you've got questions. We've got answers. We did us up send your voice memo as always to the mail at New Yorker.com with the subject line critics and now back to the episode. We were all students now some of us are also teachers or have been in the past. No mean Benson specifically I actually would love to teach someone asked me to teach. I'm just throwing that out there. I'm wondering for you guys did anything surprise you about making the switch from student to teacher.

21:28It's hard for me to be in charge. And like boundaries are hard for me like telling people what to do is hard for me. I always used to be like, if you don't mind could you also read this, you know, this other. But I will tell you this if I sense that someone wasn't respectful of my authority no matter how loosely held. Yeah. Then I would I would like get pissed. Ooh, yeah, like don't fuck with me. So you were able to reach a no more Mr. Nysky place. I yes, if pushed if pushed love knowing that not surprised but delighted to hear that about Naomi fry. Thenson, I've heard raves about your teaching. Yes. That's nice. Thank you. It's very hard to do. What Naomi said is profound as no one likes to say we do need a strong leader and like in the classroom authority is a gift to note like I'm saying what I want you to do.

22:34And how I want you to do it. And I'm being very clear about that. Having control I think that's the thing I took it took the longest from you to understand about this activity. So that is really, really good. The other thing is connected which is like you never know as a student how well the teacher wants you to do. And how nervous they are about themselves like how well they want to do. I think that you're there being like you know I better have something to say that the teacher feels that so much worse. And so you're point they're the one in charge. So nothing if they're not the prime mover it you know it can just be so nerve wracking your teacher is often very like afraid. I told you so true. Because of nervousness what happens with nervousness whether you're on stage or in a classroom is that the prime difference experientially like in the classroom is relationship to time. Time is bending man.

23:34It's a roller coaster. The first five minutes feel like three hours and you're like I cannot believe I'm going to have to just leave the classroom because I did all my stuff. You're so nervous. Ten minutes in. And then if it's working you know please God minute 15 something happens fast. And then by the end you didn't say all the stuff you wanted to say. So I mean just the relationship to minute by minute the clock is so different. And I've done everything I've stood in front of the clock so I can't see it. I've stood across from it so I can see it every second. I've tried everything but the clock relationship to the clock is to me the prime difference. I leave some seminar and I'm like I was in there all day you know it's like a boxing match. So you know, treat your teachers well man they're going through stuff up there. Yeah. All right let's move on to our next question which is definitely in conversation with what we're talking about. This is Lily.

24:34Hi critics. I absolutely love the show. I listen every week. And my question for you guys is about teaching. I have recently become a teacher and it is really amazing but super full on very stressful. And it seems that a lot of people in my life don't really understand it. And I was wondering if there are any bits of media especially books or movies that depict the feeling of being a teacher like the highs and lows. How intense it can be like those kinds of feelings. I would love something that I can go to when I'm feeling bogged down so that I can relate to. That would be really good. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you Lily. Thank you Lily. And congratulations on starting a new chapter in your life. Absolutely. Yeah. I swear to God I thought about this for so long and then I was like my real answer is the Natalie Portman Film Black Swan.

25:34Wait you mean with the Frenchman? She's a ballerina. Yes. But I mean yeah the Van San Cousel character. No I mean Natalie Portman. Like the performance. It's about the psychodrama of performance and the admitting that there is like a multiplicity of selves. And it's like who moment to moment must I be? What a take. Wow. What a take. Now I've heard it all. That was the my real answer. My love that movie by the way. A lighter answer is a recent movie which I really like. And I think it's silly but also very heartwarming and has one of my favorite actors in it because he's also very silly and very heartwarming. It's Paul Jamati in the holdovers. Oh yeah the holdovers. That's right. It's about this teacher who is sort of an outcast even among the teaching ranks but also kind of a figure of fun and teasing by the students. He like you know he doesn't smell good he doesn't look good.

26:36We come to know that he was also a student at the school and now they're the holdovers there. There's a couple of kids and him who have nowhere to go on Christmas break for various reasons. And what can I say it warms the heart and what it teaches you is that. And this is you know this is intrinsic and so many theories of teaching. And I read John Dewey's democracy and education. It's all about how teaching is it rests upon. It depends upon an emotional response first. This is why we talk about beauty. You have to strike an emotional chord and then something opens up. And this movie is kind of like about how much care and emotion and frankly love has to go into teaching otherwise you're not doing it. And Paul Jamati learns that, the students learn that. It's a very sweet movie and we've been being like after we watch it we're like, oh I'm going to watch this every Christmas. It's like in the Christmas. Oh wow. It's in the Christmas rotation and it's also a very sweet movie about teaching.

27:39That's such a good call. I completely forgot about the holdovers not in general but in this category. That's so true. Yeah there's this kind of. Paul Jamati is playing such a role that he's just grown into. He's the curmudgeon. Yeah you don't have to like me but you're going to respect me. Of course no one does either. Finding the human in himself and the boys finding the human in him is part of the whole transformation. That's a great answer. Also the black swan is just incredible Vincent says so much about you. How you view this vocation. I know because that is that is not a little bit more. I know that is really. It is hard. It is a hard thing to do man. And it's a performance. It's a lot. It's a lot. And that is what being a teacher is all about. That's what you teach a little bit. Yeah it might drive you to the very brink of sanity and then but she over it is what I'm getting from that pit. Aranoya and mangled toes. That's teaching. I love this question because it really made me think that this must be one of the really

28:40underrepresented areas. Like basically everybody goes to school. Obviously many fewer people are teachers. And there are so many works, campus novels and so on about the experience of being a student. But I really feel that there's a dearth about the experience of teaching. There's a dearth I say. And it's a it's a hideous dearth and someone needs to get on it. So the thing that popped into my head is this movie The Class from 2008. I haven't seen it in a little while. It's a French movie. I remember that movie. You remember this movie? I do. It was in film form, I believe. Yeah. It won the Palm Door. It's definitely a film form movie. But it's about exactly what you want. Lily, it's about the high highs and the low lows. It's a fictional movie about a teacher in Paris at an inner city school, the very diverse class, full of what we would call underprivileged kids, who is teaching them and going through the

29:43triumph and the big struggle of getting this class to go here and getting them to learn stuff. And it was directed by Laurent Canté. And it stars this non-actor, François Begoix-Daud, who wrote the novel that the book is based on himself as a teacher. And basically everyone in the cast are amateurs. And the standouts are actually Begoix-Daud's is really great as the main teacher. But the cast is all amateur kids, high school kids. And they're great too. And the thing that I think makes this an interesting movie is, of course, there have been a number of kind of like white savior-esque teaching texts. What is interesting about this movie is there are a lot of challenges that both sides undergo. That the students undergo, but also the teacher undergoes. And their mistakes he makes, like bad ones as well. Offensive ones. And painful ones. And so it's about grappling with that. And obviously also about grappling with difference. How do you cohere? How do you cohere as a unit, as a class, which is kind of this like outside the family,

30:45maybe the unit, the kind of foundational unit, being a class, of course, one that's going to dissolve because next year you'll be in a different class or whatever it might be. Yeah, how do you get people to care and how do you understand them and admit that you're wrong? So definitely if intensity is what you're looking for, I think this is a good choice. Okay. One of my favorite Simpson's episodes is when Lisa meets the substitute teacher, Mr. Bergstrom. Who? Tell us more. You don't remember this at all. I don't. Okay. I have a clue. I'm so sorry. Lisa Simpson, you are probably familiar. She's a smart kid, both in her family and in school too. She's like the nerd, right? And no one understands her. She wants to learn. She wants to break free of the confines of her family and of her situation, but kind of she has no interlocutor for that because teachers, parents, peers, no one is answering

31:51her call for kind of like love of culture and love of learning. And one day a substitute teacher voiced by Dustin Hoffman enters the class. So Cowboy has just entered and is now shooting the teacher. How about this? Everybody? I want to see two eyes on every single person staring right at me right now. There are three things wrong with my costume. Anybody named? Those three things will get my ham. I believe I know the answer. What's your name? Lisa Simpson. We'll go ahead, Miss Simpson. Um, one. Your belt buckle says State of Texas, but Texas wasn't a state until 1845. Very good. Two. The revolver was an invention until 1835. That's excellent. Three. You seem to be of the Jewish faith. Are you sure I'm Jewish? I'm Jewish. And there weren't any Jewish Cowboys. Very good. That's excellent. And I'm also wearing a digital watch, but all except that here you go little lady. And for the record there were a few Jewish Cowboys ladies and gentlemen, big guys who were

32:52great shots and spent money freely. I'm Mr. Bergstrom. Feel free to make fun of my name if you want. Two suggestions are Mr. Nerdstrom and Mr. Bugger. Strung. And he's it. He's so in. And it's just the most so it develops, you know, obviously Lisa becomes his favorite student. She is like totally in love with him. He knows things that she never believed an adult can know. And then he has to leave because he has to like go teach elsewhere. And she runs after his train and he gives her a piece of paper that says you are Lisa Simpson and just like look at the look at that, you know, piece of paper when you feel like you don't know who you are, where you're going. And he gives her the teacher gives her the gift of believing there's a life outside of her current circumstances. And it's one of the most beautiful examples of kind of what a teacher can what a good teacher can do when they come into your life.

33:55Chloria. That's very beautiful. It reminds me of an essay that maybe we should shout out on this episode, which is by our colleague, Marbeque Mare. That's called, are you my mother? And it's about it's about sort of applying the matrix of transference and counter transference, the psychological concepts to the classroom that they're that like arrows and love and mutual interest is part of the dynamics of a classroom and that a teacher is always managing those relationships in the way that Mr. Bergstrom is sort of using his charisma and appeal to kind of relate to Lisa Simpson. I thought that was a really great piece because I think it's true observation. Yeah. You know, one further thing occurs to me, which is just Lily, I don't know if you know dead poets society. Do you know it? Watch it. I mean, that is the classic. Watch it. It's like a charismatic teacher who changes the lives of his students. We're trying to think out of the box. Go right to the box, maybe. Yeah, maybe you need to go to start in the box. Start of the box. Yeah. We've heard from teachers in a minute a student who's trying to prove to his friends that poetry

35:01is actually good. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. Comprehensive. Witty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. I'm David Remnick and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful, exquisite, just, you know, real. And we're back. Streaming on peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller. Slatney, it's Joss Lomemblus. I like that. Deciertified fresh series returns. Your boss. He always like that. So, this is just a night. Oh, no, this is mad.

36:01Oyster, it's everybody. It's a hell. There's a certain satisfaction on your work with someone. Maybe we could be a family. You're a sadistic pig. The paper. New season streaming September 9th only on peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. LinkedIn is pretty amazing at helping you grow your small business. We cannot make your email response time faster. We can help you sell, market, and hire in one place. We cannot help you find space for your three desk drinks. Why do you have three? And while we can't help you find the perfect volume for your presentation video, LinkedIn can help you find the perfect audience for your business. Grow your small business on LinkedIn. Learn more at LinkedIn.com slash small business. Okay. Moving on to our final listener. Hi, critics. This is Harry Cawing from Providence, Rhode Island. I'm a big fan of the show.

37:01I'm a graduate student and I study poetry. And when I tell people that a response I often get is, I don't like poetry. And I found that the best way to counter that response, or at least to help explain to people why I enjoy poetry is to just read them a poem. So I am asking all of you to pick the poem that you think would best explain to someone who doesn't like poetry, why it's worthwhile, and then to read it to us. This is a great question. And you know, it's hard to know what poem will do this for any given listener or student, but I guess I could tell you just a poem that did it for me. It's certainly my favorite, my first favorite poem, if that makes sense. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but maybe for each of us we can just kind of read the opening lines to our poem.

38:03So for me, here goes theme for English B by Langston Hughes. The instructor said, go home and write a page tonight and let that page come out of you. Then it will be true. I wonder if it's that simple. I am 22 colored, born in Winston Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem. I am the only color student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas, eighth Avenue, seventh. And I come to the Y. The Harlem branch Y where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down and write this page. It's not easy to know what is true for you or me at 22 my age, but I guess I'm what I feel and see. And here, Harlem, I hear you. Hear you, hear me. We too. You me talk on this page. The poem goes on to sort of continue this correspondence almost between the speaker

39:09of the poem and his teacher. And it's a great poem and what I love especially about it, even more now than I did back then when I was a kid when I first read it, is that it's about how a prompt write this, the necessity of writing creates a place. And this is what I think poetry deeply is. It presents itself as monologue, but really it's a place where through imagination or through rhythms that you pick up on the street or whatever conversations can happen. Langston Hughes, he's a great poet, whatever, but it's not all of his poems are my favorites, but that one is just like, I don't know. I went to school in Harlem when I was a kid, so it was just like someone describing streets that I'd been on. I don't know, just knowing that a form can hold experiences that are not yours, but resemble yours in a such a way that like, oh yeah, this guy's dead and I'm still meeting him. The voice is so clear and so true. I think that's, you know, that's what it's all about.

40:09That was gorgeous. You know, one thing that I love about that choice, Vincent, is how discursive it is and how it is just so much about the voice and a really natural sounding voice as if, as you just said, as if the voice of the poet is right there with us in the room. And I do think that sometimes when people say blanket things like, I don't like poetry, they're thinking of poetry, perhaps as a really removed form or a really abstracted form or a really rigid form, like something that can't accommodate a more intense or vibrant experience. And so you just chose the perfect poem to blow all of those assumptions up. And Harry, I think your friends who don't like poetry should listen to that reading. No me. I mean, guys, you know me, I don't really like poetry. But no, no, no, no, no. But but but but but we're all here, you know, but of course, of course that's not correct.

41:13Of course now that I, you know, listen to this Langston use poem, I'm like, of course I like that, you know, but it's just, I mean, poetry can be removed and can be, you know what I mean? There are different poetry is a lot of different things. And I think of course I gravitate when I think about poetry and poetry that I've liked. Of course I gravitate towards the type of poetry that, you know, in this example that Vincent just read, which is talky, you know, juicy with details. I mean, relatable is such a stupid word, but you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, it's about, which is also what I am often drawn to when I think of what I like about a novel. And so I was thinking, okay, what should I bring to our little kind of seminar here thinking about poetry? And I was thinking, okay, my friend Ariana Rines, who is a contemporary poet and very prolific

42:14contemporary poet and who I like very much as a person, but her poetry too speaks to me. And I, you know, I have several, she's going to the text. I have, yeah, I have several, several books of hers. Very gorgeous volume. Yeah, this is a nice Kelly Groning. Kelly Groning, yeah, this is from Mercury, which came out originally in 2011. Let's see, this, this poem is called Lull, but it's, it's the way it's spelled as two L's in the beginning and two L's in the back. So it's kind of like the end. Do you want to just read us the first few lines just to give us a sense? Joan Danyan and I are in her summer place. She serves me what she calls a Hawaiian burrito, which is wrapped in both flower and corn tortillas. Joan goes on and on about Hawaii and burritos and culture, how skinny I look as in drastic and sick. Skeletal women always do this. Oh, Joan, I say, I don't look that bad. Do I? Auschwitz bad? Smiling much more than is sincere.

43:15Plump and game I remain nevertheless a woman. As in, I know, spite when I feel it. There's a lot of kind of thinking about what it feels to be a woman in a body compared to other bodies in the world and the space and how that links to kind of like spirit or it kind of like what you are inside versus what you are outside and how one accesses the other. And I would, Harry, I would recommend, you know, I mean, you're, might very well be very familiar with Ariane's work, but for those of you who aren't, I think that's a, great and interesting. In the same way, I just feel like such a populist. Like, I'm like, give the students stuff about drugs, you know, show them the symptoms of life or whatever. Totally. I mean, that was, that was my first reaction to this question as well. The first thing that popped into my mind was a book by the poet Sharon Olds called Oads, which is, has a whole bunch of different Oads to things you don't expect to body parts,

44:21the penis, the clearest, the tampons, the douchebags. And I was like, Harry, give the modes. But then I thought, let me go in a little bit of a different direction because if we're thinking about, like, I do very much enjoy that book. But if I'm thinking about what really sits with me and but guiles me and has that kind of compressed stringent poetic quality, I think of Louise Glick, the American Nobel laureate. And her intensely cerebral poems that are almost always also about the body and her unpeeding way of writing about experience and the great beauty of her language, which really demands accuracy of representation above all. And a book of hers that I love, there are many, but it's a book called The Wild Iris. And it's a lot of poems about flowers.

45:23And it's not about being pretty and ornamental. So it's about nature and living and death and confronting the bigness of reality, but through flowers. So here's a poem called The Red Poppy. The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings? Oh, I have those. They govern me. I have a Lord in heaven called the sun and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Great reading voice. That was great. You know, it's so hard to read poems. You guys did such a great job. It's so hard because you want to kind of, you're like the enjambent and where do I? But the line, the great thing is not having a mind coming from a flower. This is a poem in the voice of a poppy, guys. The great thing is not having a mind.

46:24Feelings. Oh, I have those. They govern me. Those lines are in my head all the time because unfortunately I do have a mind. And it also governs me. And so do my feelings. So again, like for Glick and her poetry so much is about the body trying to leave the body. She's written a lot about anorexia, which she experiences a younger person. And here's something that is all body trying to contend with that experience, but also to make some kind of intellectual sense of it. Ooh, I really, I actually have, I have chills. I love it. Guys, I like poetry now. I mean, look, we can't like it at all. It's just like we like movies. We don't like them all. You're so right. Well, this was really fun. It was fun. Let's do it again sometime. Absolutely. Before we go, as surely a summer must turn to fall, treasured colleagues move on to new things. And this week we're saying goodbye to a very beloved, dear and wonderful member of our

47:28show, Alex Barish, our editor and all around partner in crime. Alex Barish has been with us since the beginning of critics at large. If you've listened to our horror episodes, you know his dear and delightful voice. And his DNA is baked into every show we've done so far, and it always will be Alex. We love you. Thank you so much. And go get them. We love you so much. We love you so much, Alex. I'm so sad. But happy for you. True, baby. Yeah. True, baby. Yeah. True. This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rianne Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kuchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandi with music by Alexis Quadrado. And as always, you can find all of our episodes at New Yorker.com slash critics.

48:30Comprehensive. Whitty. Speculative. Critical. Insightful. Profound. Wide-ranging. Hopefully it doesn't take itself too too seriously. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. The thoughtful. Just a quiz. Just, you know, real. And we're back. Streaming on Peacock. May I present to you the award-winning staff of the Toledo Truth Teller. Slapped me. It's Joss something loose. Ah, yes! I like that. Deciertified fresh series returns. Your boss. You always like that, so or is it just a not own love? This is mad. Oyster is everybody! It was a certain satisfaction when you were with someone like we could be a family. You don't have to be thick pig!

49:31The paper. New season streaming September 9th only on Peacock. This show gives me a reason to live. Hey, first time. Love those sneakers. Thanks. Deepop. Got him. Cheap. Oh yeah? Okay. Downloading. There's loads on there. Wow. Wish I'd had this last week. I just paid full price for mine. Right? And you can't get these ones anywhere. Find what you want for less on Deepop. Oh, sneakers. One once. Excellent condition.