Poetry Podcast: James Richardson Reads W. S. Merwin

On this month’s poetry podcast, James Richardson reads and discusses “A Single Autumn,” by W. S. Merwin. Richardson says that he admires the poet’s “need to live in a world where the simplest things had stories, where the stones in the garden were growing things for themselves.” Here, for example, is the speaker describing moving into his parents’ house after their deaths:

echoes in every room
without a sound
all the things that we
had never been able to say
I could not remember
doll collection
in a china cabinet
plates stacked on shelves
lace on drop-leaf tables
a dried branch of bittersweet
before a hall mirror
were all planning to wait

Richardson later reads his own poem “Essay on Wood,” which also concerns itself with the spirit of a living space:

Of all the elements, it is happiest in our houses.
It will sit with us, eat with us, lie down
and hold our books (themselves a rustling woods),
bearing our floors and roofs without weariness,
for unlike us it does not resent its faithfulness
or question why, for what, how long?

You can hear James Richardson’s reading of the poems and his conversation with The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, by listening above or by downloading the podcast for free from iTunes. Click here for more New Yorker podcasts.