First draft: a writing dialogue is a weekly program that features in-depth interviews with fiction and non-fiction writers, essayists, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Presented by Mitzi Rapkin, First eraser celebrates creative writing and the people who put their carefully chosen words into print, as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
In this episode, Mitzi talks with Ada Limón about her latest collection of poems, the wounded guy.
Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!
From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: There is a great sense of longing in your poems. I have a feeling that this idea of actually being seen by the world is very important in your poems. In fact, I think it is a primary need. If I were to edit Maslow’s Hierarchy, I would probably put being seen somewhere at the bottom with food and shelter. You have a poem called “Banishing Wonders” and you say there:
“What is it to be seen in the right way? Who are you? a flash of color
a blur in the crowd,
something spectacular, but untouchable”.
I wanted to talk about it, but this was not the only poem in which this idea of being seen came up.
Ada Lemon: I love that you brought that up, because I think it’s really essential to this book. I am very interested in the idea of not only witnessing but being witnessed and being seen. And I think that very often, as artists, we think that our job is to look, but I think that, as humans, what we also need is not only to be seen, but to be contemplated. And I think when that happens, and when someone can do that for you, or when you see an animal looking at you and it feels like, Oh, I’m being watched as part of the community; I watch the crows and the crows watch me and they know my routine and I know theirs and here we are together.
It’s this kind of connection, an interconnectedness and also that feeling of working against loneliness, you know, that idea that we’re not separate. All of those things are at play in this book, but really being seen and witnessed, and not always being the person who watches and reports and records, but sometimes being able to be received, I think that’s really important as a human being. being, as human experience.
***
ada lemon He is the author of six books of poetry, including transport, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. Limón is also the host of the critically acclaimed poetry podcast, the slowdown. His new book of poems is called the wounded guy.