Poetry as a Cistern for Love and Loss

0:02This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. This year, The New Yorker published an anthology called A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker. It was all to help mark the magazine's centennial, and it was put together by our poetry editor, Kevin Young. The book includes works from the early days of Dorothy Parker and moves onward and onward to poems we printed in just the past few years and months. One of those poets is Gabrielle Calvo Caressi. Their recent collection called The New Economy was a finalist for the National Book Award this year.

0:42And Calvo Caressi sat down recently to talk about it with Kevin Young. And heads up that some of Calvo Caressi's work addresses suicide, and this is going to come up in our conversation as well. I was so excited about the opportunity to talk with Gabrielle because they're such a force on the page, in person, And you can hear in their poetry this kind of sense of both community and individuality, this sorrow and this joy, this idea of ecstasy and expectation. But it's flecked with real human trial and tribulation with everyday pain, but also sort of extraordinary moments. Can we start today with the title of your new book, The New Economy?

1:29Yeah. Can you tell us where that title came from? Because it's not a book about the stock market or inflation, but it is about, you know, what we pay, what the cost of things are in some sense. Tell us about it. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting. I wrote a poem in my last book, Rocket Fantastic, called Praise House, The New Economy. And, you know, like sometimes I imagine you have this too. You get a kind of phrase or an idea in your mind and it just keeps living with you. And that poem thinks a lot about what is it to just think of, like, kindness and love and generative hunger and pleasure as a kind of economy in and of itself.

2:11And then when I was sort of beginning to build this book and make these poems, I thought, you know, I think the title of this thing that I'm making, whether it's a book or whatever it is, I think I like this idea of the new economy still. I like this idea of this book is so much about neighbors. This book is so much about what it is to reach out, what it is to feast with people, what it is to protect people, and what it is to do a lot of times under real duress, which I think, you know, like the stock market, we are rising and falling. And often we are doing those things because of forces outside of ourselves that we are at least told we cannot control.

2:55And maybe the book is a little bit about that, too. Maybe we can control them more than we think. Are your books often connected in this way? Do you find, like, there's crossover connection? Yeah, I think certainly I would say now they are. I mean, although I think in a funny way, there are ways that this book, The New Economy, which is my fourth book. I can't believe it. I just turned 51 years old. Like, who knew? Four books? Thank you. So in some ways, this book reminds me very much of my first book in ways that I can't even like totally articulate. But coming back to a lot of these questions about coming home, what it is to come home.

3:34But more recently, in a lot of ways, because I am interested in things like jazz and opera, like long form music. At some point, I thought to myself, not just like why couldn't the same ideas come up, but like why couldn't phrases? You know, why couldn't you start having like you do in jazz? Like, why couldn't this just be a kind of phrase that I'm playing through the books that I'm thinking about? I say things in my day to day life, as I'm sure like lots of people who are listening do. Like I probably to a boring extent, I say the same things a lot of the time, but often with different inflections, you know.

4:11And so I think that's something I actually have really started to try and do in the poems as well. What if I just sounded like myself? What if I said, I love you 75 times and every time it sounded a little different? Just like we do, you know, or can I have that donut? Which is also something that might show up in the poems. I love that about the poems, those echoes and reverberations that really connect. You said you often begin writing a poem on your feet, like just walking around. And the poems have that kind of quality. Could you tell us about that? Yeah. Well, you know, I was a kid who I did not.

4:45I have a visual and neurological condition called nystagmus. And so that affects my balance. And so I didn't walk. I mean, I didn't really walk till I was like three years old. And I couldn't do stairs. I have poems about it where like I couldn't do stairs till I was like seven and a half, eight years old. And so once I could start walking, I really didn't stop. And walking is still, though, a thing that's kind of a challenge for me. Balance is tough for me. But this, like, act of, like, walking, moving, I'm also, like, a professional daydreamer. I love the poets who are like, well, I sat down at my desk and I just, the meter came to me.

5:21And I just, I mean, I'm just, like, dreaming all day long. And so I find few places, you know, sort of more generative and more wonderful to dream than like being in my fallible body, like trying to cross the street, walking along a trail. And so that is a really big deal. A lot of times the poems start there. A lot of times my ideas start there. My hopes start there. And so it's a long time often before the poem actually gets to the page. I want to ask you about this form you've created, which I absolutely love, the cistern. Yeah. Can you tell us about that and how that came to be and how that came to dominate this book?

6:02Absolutely. You know, again, like rooted in music to some extent, there is this extraordinary, like maybe we should take a break now and just for an hour listen to Pauline Oliveros right here. Just like let the people really dig into it. But Paulina Oliveros, really one of the parents of electronic music, had this remarkable project called the Deep Listening Project. And she went down into the Dan Harpool cistern and had all of these musicians playing down there. You can go listen to the Deep Listening band sessions and it's worth doing. And part of her idea was that you could have all of these musicians down there, and because of the resonances of that cistern, people could start playing at different times.

6:57And once you got to the top of the cistern, once you were standing on the top, though, it would all come out as a unified vision. Ah.

7:11And I thought to myself, well, like, what am I other than, you know, I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my family. I'm the most recent top of the cistern of my own experience, but also perhaps of a certain kind of experience in America, in my neighborhood. I'm part of a cistern. I'm just like down in the cistern also speaking my piece and we're all coming together. And at some point, someone's going to stand on the top and they're going to hear us all. So there's that. And then there's also just this idea of reverberation and echo, kind of like this idea of phrases that come back through my books.

7:49Like, what if I'm just building a deep well here? You know, like what if I'm just in a deep well and someday I'm not going to be here anymore? The funny thing is that when I was talking to Copper Canyon about this book and my wonderful editor, Michael Wiegers, was like, tell me about the cisterns. I started talking about Pauline Oliveros and the Dan Harpole cistern. And he went, the Dan Harpole cistern? I said, yeah. He said, I'm looking at it right now. It's right across from Copper Canyon. Oh, wow. And I guess like I think with this. And so where does that remind our listeners where that is?

8:20That is in Port Townsend, Washington. If anyone wants to come to the Dan Harple cistern with me, I don't have the balance to crawl down into it. How big must it be? Oh, my gosh. I wish we could pull it up. Well, it's on the cover. This is just part of it. Oh, wow. So it's a real – it's almost like a mine shaft? Yeah. It's more than a well. It's a vast, vast – I think they used it for water. I think it's like a vast container. And they do bring, like, musicians down and stuff. Michael was like, maybe we can get you down there. But then I saw the picture of the rickety ladder and I was like, OK, but only on the last day of my life.

8:56But my dream is that and anyone who wants to join, we all like people go down in the cistern. We descend in order to ascend. Yeah. And then we also like if the whole book could be read in the cistern. Wow. And then some of us could sit on top and like listen. I mean, that'd be so rad. Well, I think you've achieved that just in the poems themselves. this, would you say, a vast sort of area that you've created, that these voices, mostly yours, but I feel like there's others, and yours is, you know, full of multitudes. Well, I want to hear a cistern. Can I have you read the first poem in the book, which is the one the New Yorker published in 2018, Hammond B3 Organ Cistern?

9:39The days I don't want to kill myself are extraordinary. Deep bass, all the people in the streets waiting for their high fives and leaping. I mean, leaping when they see me. I am the sun-filled god of love, or at least an optimistic undersecretary. There should be a word for it. The days you wake up and do not want to slit your throat. Money in the bank. Enough for an iced green tea every weekday and Saturday and Sunday. It's like being in the armpit of a Hammond B3 organ, just reeks of gratitude and funk, the funk of ages. I am not going to ruin my love's life today. It's like the time I said yes to gray sneakers, but then the salesman said, wait.

10:31And they are out of the backroom like the bakery's first biscuits. Bright blue kicks. Iridescent. Like a scarab. Oh, who am I kidding? It was nothing like a scarab. It was like bright blue fucking sneakers. I did not want to die that day. Oh my God. Why don't we talk about it? How good it feels. And if you don't know, then you're lucky, but also you poor thing. Bring the band out on the stoop. Let the whole neighborhood hear. Come on, everybody. Say it with me nice and slow. No pills, no cliff, no brains on the floor. Bring the bass back. No rope, no hose. Not today, Satan. Every day I wake up with my good fortune and news of my demise.

11:25Don't keep it from me. Why don't we have a name for it? Bring the bass back. Bring the band out on the stoop. Hallelujah. So great to hear that. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hammond B3 Organ Cistern. And that was also gathered in the Century of Poetry in the New Yorker as followed to 1925 to 2025. And it was so great to run that, to see that. And hearing it again, I'm struck by so many lines in it. I'm not going to ruin my love's life today. Or every day I wake up with my good fortune, line break, and news of my demise. Don't keep it from me. How do you balance this candor, this ability to talk about these difficult things, death, suicide, loss, things that are often, as you say, why don't we talk about it?

12:18Yeah. And how do you balance that good fortune with news of my demise? Yeah. You know, I think this is something I have learned, or I should say I am learning, to do in my, like, life and in my poems in real time. And I'm allowing myself to sound like myself doing that, right? In terms of, like, I've just started using periods in different ways in the line, right? Like, I am not going to ruin my love's life today, period. Right? As opposed to, like, before I would have been like, I am not going to ruin my love's life today like a train surging through the hillsides of Scandinavia. You know, like, what?

13:05Right, you kept going. Yeah, like there's something about this is these days that we have. I mean, I imagine people who are listening. There are people like me who some days like it is just very hard to be alive. And that wasn't sort of being able to talk about that was like another closet I was in. I've lived in lots of closets in my life. And that was maybe the deepest. Like that was one where I was really like swimming through the mothballs to get out of it. because I thought this is something we can't talk about. And the truth is we can. And I can talk about the fact that there are days where it's very difficult to be alive and also sometimes just like hearing this piece of music or just like smelling the air in a certain way.

13:58All of a sudden it doesn't change the fact that I'm devastated and also like, oh, here I am! Exclamation point.

14:10Gabrielle Calvo Caressi speaking with The New Yorker's poetry editor, Kevin Young. More in a moment.

14:28I know you've written about your mother's death from suicide. Yeah. And I wonder if you, is that something you're still writing about in this book? Oh, yeah. I think that, I think I will probably never stop writing about it, right? Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that this book is full of her. She is definitely one of the ghosts. Also, I think, what is it when we get older than our parents were when they died? You know, I'm significantly, she died at like 42 years old. I'm 51. Like, I'm older. Right. I wrote about her a ton in my other books. I was still younger than her. I came to certain kinds of understanding as I approached her age.

15:17But it's wild to look back at my mother as like this young woman, like this young woman who was in a lot of pain and who was also like a poor, mentally ill person in the jaws of the Reagan era. that is a very powerful thing and I think this book tries to also look at that. Right. Well, I think it's a book in some ways about survival and about triumph as we hear. I wonder about place and thinking about moving there to North Carolina. How does it shape your work? I got to say, I love the South. And that is, I think a lot of people might hear that and say, what, you know, you're a trans, lesbian, like what?

16:12Where I live in the South, in Durham, or old East Durham, North Carolina, first of all, like it's tobacco country. and where I grew up in central Connecticut was actually tobacco. We grew broadleaf. It was like Connecticut was like the huge tobacco part of the country besides North Carolina. Also, like the first town I lived in, Middle Haddam, Connecticut, which is part of East Hampton, Connecticut, with my grandparents, I just like everybody knew everyone and everyone was in your business, like in a great way. And I mean, I'm sure difficult ways too, but like the whole town had dinner together four times a year.

16:48And also, and I do say this, and this is like the poems, like if I walked to the post office and I did not say hello to everybody there, by the time I got home, my grandmother would be like standing outside being like, Mrs. So-and-so called. She said you must not be feeling well. That is not different than living in a neighborhood in North Carolina. And I – one of the reasons I think when we got there, I immediately felt so comfortable was like there were just grandmothers everywhere. And I live my life like I'm coming – like my grandmother is going to say something to me. I had a lot of people talking to me about my garden.

17:22I had a lot of people being like, why are you doing it that way? And I was like, I'm in heaven. And you were fine with that, yeah. It is my – it turns out it's my absolute pocket. But I would say the South actually feels extremely familiar to me in many ways. It's also, and so that I think brought up a sense of like childhood in my poems again, like a sense of like being in community, going to church, like having people like really asking me questions about myself and like caring. Well, tell us about the Miss You poems. We have the one Miss You would love to grab that chilled tofu that we love.

17:56And also Miss You would like to take a walk with you. Yeah, we were deep in COVID. I had lost both my friend Jenny Tonpahot and Randall Keenan and I started to think about and I'm always thinking about my grandmother I mean my mother is in my poems but my grandmother is like always in my poems and I started thinking gosh like I miss I just miss them so much and then I started thinking about that phrase oh yeah missing I miss you I miss you I wish you. I wish you. And I thought to myself, gosh, like, what would it be if I could just say that enough? And in terms of thinking about sort of the craft of poetics, could I make it specific enough?

18:45Could I build the scene enough that, like, actually the portal would open and we'd just, like, be there together for a minute? Maybe we could open the portal. Let's do it. Miss you. Would like to take a walk with you. Do not care if you arrive and just your skeleton. Would love to take a walk with you. Miss you. Would love to make you shrimp saganaki like you used to make me when you were alive. Love to feed you. Sit over steaming bowls of pilaf. Little roasted tomatoes covered in pepper and nutmeg. Miss you. Would love to walk to the post office with you. Bring the ghost dog. We'll walk past the waterfall and you can tell me about the after.

19:28Wish you, Wish you would come back for a while. Don't even need to bring your skin sack. I'll know you. I know you'll know me, even though I'm bigger now, grayer. I'll show you my garden. I'd like to hop in the leaf pile you raked, but if you want to jump in, I'll rake it for you. Miss you. Standing, looking out at the river with your rake in your hand. Miss you in your puffy blue jacket. They're hip now. I can bring you a new one if you'll only come by. No, I told you it was okay to go. No, I told you it was okay to leave me. Why'd you believe me? You always believed me. Wish you would come back so we could talk about truth.

20:11Miss you. Wish you would walk through my door, stare out from the mirror. Come through the pipes. I love the end of that poem, Come Through the Pipes. It's the idea that I started thinking again of an organ, you know, not a Hammond B3 organ, but a sort of large organ in a church or movie house and that kind of idea. It's music, it feels. How does it sound to you now? You know, I love reading those poems. I have to say, like, those two, particularly that last one, maybe it is because that is a poem that really, like, has kind of – it has entered a stream of consciousness where, like, it's not about necessarily, like, performing it and people love it.

21:00It's actually that it is – and this is something I think that for many of us poets, it's what we want, right? Like, it is enacting its form in the world. Like, that is a poem that I made that when I go out in the world, people know that poem, but they know that poem because there's a cadence of it that I think rings true to them, that feels true in their bodies. They can do it too. We can do it together. I mean it. Like, everyone should just give it a shot, see what happens. And it also sounds really like me. Like it really sounds like I can't – it cannot be artifice to ask my grandmother to come back.

21:44No, bring the ghost dog. Yeah. I mean this isn't a – and it isn't easy I guess. I think that's the other thing. Yeah. That it's a – I mean it might be something everyone can do. Yeah. But the way you do it, you manage to combine all those themes that we've touched on. It isn't just come back to me privately. It's like let's do the thing we used to do together. Yeah. Let's enter the ritual. Open the portal, as you said. Yeah, let's open the portal. Let's hit the gong and see what happens. If one wanted to do, quote, like, what I do here, it's about trusting your cadence, trusting the way you breathe, trusting that the things you see in the world and the way you put them together on a page are alchemical.

22:29They can actually make something happen. And this poem does. Like, yeah. My grandmother was like the one person who always knew if I wasn't telling the truth. So if I wrote a poem asking her to come back that didn't sound like the truth, either she wouldn't come or when she did, I'd be grounded. Like, I'm 51. Well, I don't think you're grounded. You've managed to make such a beautiful thing and a beautiful book. Thank you. In the new economy. It's moving being here together. And hey, I just thank everybody here and thank everyone for listening. Gabrielle Calvo Caressi's book, The New Economy, was a finalist for the National Book Award this year.

23:10And you can read some of their work at NewYorker.com. You can also subscribe, of course, to The New Yorker there as well. NewYorker.com. Kevin Young is our poetry editor. And I'm David Remnick. That's our program for this week. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Sommer.

23:49With guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barge, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund. Thank you.