The New Yorker: Poetry

Ada Limón and Natalie Diaz join Kevin Young to discuss their collaborative poetry project, “Envelopes of Air,” a series of eight poems written in correspondence between the two poets, currently featured on newyorker.com. Below, Limón and Diaz reflect on the project’s origins, context, and process.

“The original context for the poems was quite simple really: to write poem-letters to each other. We wanted to collaborate somehow and I was originally scared Natalie was going to ask me to draw or something. But instead, we began these poem-letters. Natalie and I both travel a lot, with my home base being in Lexington, Kentucky, most of the time, and hers in Tempe, Arizona. We soon realized that the poems were giving us a new, intimate way of thinking on the page—a reader that knows you, a reader with some shared history, a poet reader, a woman reader, a brown-woman reader. In terms of symbolism, both green and red play important roles in the work (the red of the desert and the green of the Bluegrass and spring). You can see those colors moving through the poems, winding around the words. Also, when we talk about Kimmerer and sweetgrass, it’s in reference to the book “Braiding Sweetgrass." (That has proven to be important to both of us.) I have planted sweetgrass in my raised beds. (It’s come back and is thriving this year!)

Also, I might add, that we both talk about our inner selves—our own anxiety, insomnia, health concerns—things we might not always share in other poems, because we are truly writing to one another, someone we trust, someone that we can recognize ourselves in, mirror and be seen. She has become an essential person for me to write to, for me to listen to. Of course, there’s more and I could go on, but I also don't want to say too much. I think the main thing is: these are real letters, and real poems, at the same time.”

-Ada Limón

“What is interesting about the poems as well is that we never had any context outside of the poems. They were their own space, a third space, maybe, of Ada’s and my friendship. We met sometimes in person, crossing paths at events, and we never discussed the poem-letters. They were that intimate time and space for us, of a poem, of a letter, of a room that was a new room for us to inhabit, individually, as we moved toward or away from ourselves and one another, and together, as we became a new space for each other to fill with words.

These poems are in some ways very different than anything I’ve ever written—I’ve written about dark and bright emotionalities before, but this is a new, more vulnerable, more open field of myself that I found through my correspondence with Ada. We borrow one another’s phrases and language at times, we incorporate friends and lovers, we thread through what we are reading and what is happening in our lives and our worlds, like any letter would. Ada is one of the most important audiences I have written for, because I love her, she is my friend, and I also admire her as a poet and thinker and person. In some ways, I have risked more of myself in these poems than in other poems I have written. She has become one of the beloveds I write toward, as are my family, my friends, my lovers, my peoples and communities.”

-Natalie Diaz

Marie Howe joins Kevin Young to read and discuss Lucie Brock-Broido's poem "The American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act" and her own poem "The Star Market."

Meena Alexander joins Kevin Young to read and discuss Gerald Stern’s poem “Adonis," and her own poem “Kochi by the Sea.”

Terrance Hayes joins Kevin Young to read and discuss Matthew Dickman's poem "Fire" and his own poem “New York Poem."

David Lehman joins Kevin Young to read and discuss John Ashbery's Poem "Worsening Situation," and his own poem "Stages on Life's Way."

Tracy K. Smith joins Kevin Young to read and discuss Matthew Dickman’s poem “Minimum Wage," and her own poem “Declaration.” 

Charles Simic joins Paul Muldoon to read and discuss Sharon Olds’ poem “Her Birthday as Ashes in Seawater,” and his own poem “The Infinite.”

Danielle Chapman joins Paul Muldoon to read and discuss Zbigniew Herbert's poem "Mr. Cogito Laments the Pettiness of Dreams," and her own poem "The Tavern Parlor."

Stephen Mitchell joins Paul Muldoon to read and discuss Richard Wilbur's poem "Two Voices in a Meadow," and his own translation of "The Death of Argos," from Homer’s Odyssey.

Erica Jong joins Paul Muldoon to read and discuss John Updike's poem "The City Outside," and her own poem "Dear Keats."