Jim Moore Reads Jane Mead
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Hi, you're listening to the New Yorker Poetry Podcast. I'm Kevin Young, poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine. On this program, we invite a poet to choose a poem from the New Yorker archive to read and discuss. Then they read a poem of their own that's been published in the magazine.

Today, my guest is Jim Moore, who has published eight poetry collections, including, most recently, Prognosis. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple Minnesota Book Awards. Jim, welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here. So the first poem you've selected to read is I Wonder If I Will Miss the Moss by Jane Mead. What drew you to this particular poem when you were looking through the archives?

Well, I remember when I first read it in 2021, I was really just so struck by it. And it stayed with me. I kept going back to it as a model of something. I'm not sure exactly what. But it stands in such a particularly powerful way for me. Well, why don't we hear the poem? This is Jim Moore reading I Wonder If I Will Miss the Moss by Jane Mead. I wonder if I will miss the moss.

I wonder if I will miss the moss after I fly off as much as I miss it now, just thinking about leaving. There were stones of many colors. There were sticks holding both lichen and moss. There were red gates with old hand-forged hardware. There were fields of dry grass smelling of first rain, then of new mud. There was mud, and there was the walking, all the beautiful walking.

And it alone filled me, the smells, the scratchy grass heads, all the sleeping under bushes, once waking to vultures above peering down with their bent heads the way they do, caricatures of interest and curiosity, once to a lizard, once to a kangaroo rat, once to a rat. They did not say I belonged to them, but I did.

Whenever the experiment on and of my life begins to draw to a close, I'll go back to the place that held me and be held. It's okay. I think I did what I could. I think I sang some. I think I held my hand out. That was I Wonder If I Will Miss the Moss by Jane Mead, which was published in the September 20, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.

I love hearing that poem from you, from Jane, but through you. And I feel like you really brought out the pacing of it, which I think is one of the things that strikes me. And sort of the beginning being this sweep, you know, and just declaring itself almost. I wonder if I will miss the moss after I fly off as much as I miss it now, just thinking about leaving. I mean, what a benediction, you know, and a kind of,

the Annunciation at the same time. And then you have these kind of stones, as it were, like these building blocks. How do you see what amounts to that big stanza from, there were stones of many colors down the way to, they did not say I belong to them, but I did. How did you see that? Well, first of all, the opening, as you pointed out, it does feel like a benediction. And I think of that poem as if

As if she was an old friend and had come to sit down next to me and she'd prefaced this poem by saying, I have something important to tell you. I've got some news. And in the course of the poem, the news is probably about an impending death, but it's also about a great love of life. So I think that opening sweep is lovely. And then...

It needs to be grounded in some way. And there's a lot of literal ground in the poem. There's mud, there's stones, there's sticks, there's the walking, all the walking. These things that are so human and so granular. So I think it's really important that she went from the opening to this really quite long, not explanation really, but just a sort of

of what had mattered to her in her life. And then at the end, comes back again, not to a large statement, it's actually a very humble statement. But, you know, what does she say? I did what I could. I think I sang some.

I think I held my hand out. Not, I did do this. I did do that. Right, right. I think I did this. I think I did that. Right, right. And that's so human because she did do those things. But the way she says them, it's just so intimate, personal. Yeah, yeah.

Well, and it's a different kind of observation than the sleeping and then the animals observing the speaker, her, you know, once waking to vultures, you know, I mean. Really? Yikes, you know. Yeah, yikes. But also once to a lizard, you know, once to a kangaroo rat, once to a rat, you know. Once to a rat. Yeah, there's this. Not enough it's a kangaroo rat. Then you've got to also have a rat rat. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think the humor, as you can hear us laughing about it, comes through, you know? And I think in that moment of...

You know, undertow, there is this joy, if only in the cataloging. But also, you know, poets have been walking since there were poets and since there was walking. And so here, all the beautiful walking. I mean, I love that line. And one line conjures this long history of walking.

It's a little like a painter drawing a horizontal line across a canvas or across a page. Suddenly there's a horizon. In one gesture, you have the whole of the art. Whenever a poet starts walking in a poem and in a poem of my own, I'm going to read the same thing happens. I'm always happy because to me it signifies that there's some shift or some change. And we're going to hear what that is, what that's all about. Right, right.

Well, you said you knew her well and you knew her work, I presume. No, I did not know her personally. I read some of her work over the years on and off, but not a lot of it. This poem just took me by surprise. And I found out since, and it's sort of evident from the way it's set up in the magazine, it was published posthumously that she was ill at the time that she wrote this poem.

So, no, I didn't know her. Well, but now, isn't it funny? Because I felt like you did, the way you described that quality. Well, I know. That's what I feel. I feel like I know her a lot better than I know a lot of people. And it's this poem that I know her from. Right. And I know from past experience with other poems by other poets that just because a poet writes an amazing poem doesn't mean they're always going to be an amazing, wonderful person. However, this poem really is just like, come on, this is...

Like when my time comes, and I'm no doubt approaching that time, given my age, I would be so incredibly happy.

If I could do something like this. Yeah. I mean, there's a bravery in the poem and there's a wonder. You know, that's the second word. It's such a different thing that I will miss the moss or even as you say in the end, I think I did what I could. It's different than I did what I could, which is almost a justification. Instead, it's kind of like a humility, but also there's a little bit of like, you know,

"Hey, I did it." You know, there's something there that's both brave and humble and, you know, matter of fact, it's okay. It's okay. And so we sort of have this, I don't know, tremendous acceptance at the end. I think she must have known by the end of this poem

that she'd done something extraordinary. It's just because it's so simple. It's so undramatic, except for those vultures. There's no plot. There's nothing happening. It's not like, well, I had this great marriage or I have this wonderful child or anything like that. It's so of the earth. Well, which we all are, and it reminds us of that because it's not missing anything.

something grand necessarily. It's missing the moss. But I think smelling of first rain, then of new mud, there was mud. You know, I think that the places where the poem repeats, the walking, all the beautiful walking, and it alone filled me. I mean, earlier today, I remember I was like, I got to take a walk. You know, I got to just get out of

My head in a way. And there's something about that process that brings us there. But then there's something I've never done, sleeping under a bush. How does that work exactly? It's like all the sleeping under bushes. How much was there? When I was a kid, I used to sleep inside the lilac bush in our family's backyard. But I was small. There you go. Well, again, that humor.

which I think

comes in that very interesting first line of what's the last stanza. Whenever the experiment on and of. Isn't that amazing? My life. Yeah. Whoa. You know, that really is getting at it, you know, getting at this idea that one's life is an experiment. But also there's forces acting on. On you. The self that I think are evoked in the poem. But

you know, make it one of nature,

They did not say I belong to them, but I did. And also those next couple of lines, Kevin, I'll go back to the place that held me and be held. There's that physicality again. You know, it's just so, so beautiful. You know, a friend wrote me and said after she read this one, that's what we would all like when our time comes to feel like we're being held in some way. That's right. Well, I feel like that belonging is throughout the poem and it's such a...

beautiful expression of this feeling and everything from its form to its exactness to its subtle musicality, I think is really special. Yeah, there's a lot of repetition. It's subtle, but it's there, and it really gives the poem its music, I think. And all, the word all appears a few times, and I think that all is very much the point

Just thinking about leaving. Yes, and leaving...

Such particular things. Yes. All the walking. You pointed it out earlier, but let's go. That line where she says, all the beautiful walking and it alone. Well, in real life, that's not the only thing that fills her, right? But in the moment of that poem, she's so in the heart of that walking and of that being of the earth. It really is. I mean, that's the thing you get to do in poems. You get to say things like that. I know.

I love it. Yeah. Well, that's wonderful. Well, let's talk about your poem. In the July 29th, 2024 issue, The New Yorker published your poem, Mother. Here's Jim Moore reading his poem, Mother. Mother. My friend and I had a cat we called Mother. I took the couch. My friend got the one bedroom because he often had sex and needed that private darkness. I had not yet had sex of my own volition.

No one knew I had been raped. I was so unknowing, I barely knew it myself, how lost I was to myself. I was maybe twenty. We loved that cat that had wandered into our lives, rubbing our legs, needing love and milk and a safe place to sleep, like any creature arriving on this earth from God knows where and God knows why. One hot August day, I was sitting outside

When mother joined me and sat on my lap, a thing she'd never done before, and that was where she died. I called Jeff, who had gone to a motel somewhere with his girl of the moment. "Mother died," I said. There was a long silence. Then he whispered quietly, "Oh no," as if he wanted to keep his sorrow to himself. Many years later, I told my actual mother about the rape. She cried a little and was angry on my behalf. I was calm.

relieved. Then life went on as it does without much of a pause. I was not healed by telling her, I am sorry to say, I am still not at 79. The beautiful gray sky of a rainy May day and the lindens coming into flower. That smell, you and I both love it. Did you know all along I was writing this poem to you? Often at night we walk to the river and stare down into the black current.

which has reached flood stage and carries everything before it. That was Mother by Jim Moore. Hi, I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos, and we host the Washington Roundtable from the New Yorker's Political Scene Podcast. ♪

For me, this is the water cooler. This is a wonderful chance to sit down with two of the smartest colleagues in the country and, you know, just kind of compare notes. No, that's so true because, first of all, we are actually friends in real life.

But I can't wait till Friday's to hear what you guys think. Everybody sees the headlines, but you guys fill in the gaps. I also think, though, occasionally we get somebody to come on, and I'm always smarter for it. If you get a great historian who can tell you about a presidential election 50, 60 years ago, often it can help you understand about what's happening today.

So if you're looking for weekly insights into what's going on inside the Beltway, please join us every Friday on the Washington Roundtable, part of the New Yorker's Political Scene Podcast. You know, sometimes it's enough to just say that's just an incredible poem. Thank you so much. You really bring us to that place of pain and survival.

The cat is just incredible. Mother, what a beautiful image. We feel like we get to know her, but also that idea of mothering, I think, is very much in the poem. Well, thank you so much. I don't know if it's the best poem in my next book, but I do know it's the poem that I learned the most from and that I felt took me someplace else.

that I just hadn't realized I even needed to go. You know, you deal with something over many years, some trauma, whether it's personal or cultural or whatever, and you find your solutions and you go to therapists and you try to drink or you try not to drink or whatever. And then to be able to write this poem, I went back and looked at it. I wrote it in May the year before.

And it was almost exactly the same. I had to cut some extraneous lines. It was pretty much the same. But the one thing that got added that hadn't been there before was, did you know all along I was writing this poem to you? And to me, that's a really key line because that brings me back to the present, just like the walking does in the poem. You know, it's like, okay, I've been in the past.

And now I'm, here's the month of May, here are the Lindens. And oh, here are you. I'm writing this poem to you. Right. And I didn't understand that until after the first draft. You know, it's the kind of thing that would get excised out in a workshop maybe. Like someone would say, you know, that's all, do we need to know? It's so perfect, you know, that parenthetical. Because...

We did and didn't know. And the you is specific and is also us. You know, that doubleness that I think the poem understands. And to have that sort of the beautiful gray sky of a rainy May day and the lindens coming into flower, that smell, you and I both love it. Did you know all along I was writing this poem to you? Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah.

It's the present moment. It allows me to be in the present. Nothing gets solved, and I think that's at the end of the poem, too. In the end, no matter how lucky a life you've had or how good a life, it all gets swept away, and that was part of the hard lesson of the poem for me.

but also that you can live with trauma, and everybody has some kind of trauma in some way, at least everybody who reads or writes poetry. And yet, okay, you've got that. Then what? How do you go on? How do you make a life that's not just a life of surviving the trauma, that's not just weighed down by your own personal story, but somehow opens up into the larger world? And I love it when poems do that. Well, we love it too.

And I love that, you know, it is beauty that brings us back in some way. We get the beauty before we get the you, you know, but it bridges the past and the present. Like you said, it's a really beautiful moment. You mentioned this is the poem that taught you the most. Is there something you can share about what else it's taught you? Well,

I think Seamus Heaney has a phrase, a great Irish poet, something like, sometimes the self teaches the self about the self. And it's like, here's what it's like. It's like, you know, and any poet has had this experience. If you...

If you write enough poems at a certain point, what happens is you get out beyond yourself in a certain way. Yes, you're writing from yourself. Yes, you're writing about yourself. But something else comes in. So I think what it's teaching in a sort of larger sense is to trust spontaneity, to trust

openness. If that moment comes, if that open moment comes in the writing of a poem, go with it because it's going to take you someplace. You don't have to publish it later if you don't want to, but that's

That's, I think, what I learned. And specifically from this poem, I mean, I cannot tell you how many poems I've written about my mother over the years. Starting in my very first book back in 1970-something, I have a little poem called Secrets. They say in the poem, there are some secrets you don't tell your mother. And in the poem, it's a little prose poem. I'm referring to eating peanut butter right out of the jar. Well-

In fact, there was a much deeper secret, a much more important secret, which this poem is about, and which is the first poem where I talk about that, the secret that I had kept from her all these years. So, yeah. Well, that's a lot to learn. That's a lot to learn. I want to ask you about your next book you mentioned a little bit. Right. Tell us a little bit about that.

So the next book began life in 2020. So there are a number of poems that are directly referring to the pandemic. But also, I would say about the book, as I said about this poem, that the challenge of the book, because it's a time of such social unrest and such cultural unrest. And, you know, I've lived 81 years. I've lived through some very

turbulent periods. This one tops them all. I mean, we're in something right now that's unprecedented. And so the book has to acknowledge all that. At the same time, you know, I want to live a life that's got joy in it, that's got happiness, that's got surprise in the best sense of that word. So a lot of the poems have some moments like the moment in this poem of the lindens and the beautiful gray May sky. You know, there are love poems. There are poems set in Italy because I live in Italy part of the year,

And so that factors in. And certainly aging is part of it. How terrific. We look forward to it. And I know we, you know, ran some of your lockdown poems. Yes. Yeah. And I think...

What that taught me is how powerful poetry can be. I think I knew this, but as a kind of witness. And I think that applies to all the poems we've talked about today, both Jane's, but also especially yours, and this honesty and bravery along the way. Well, thank you. What I thought about

going through lockdown and all of that. And what I think about approaching dying, not that I'm not ill at all, but it gets closer. And of course, her poem is about that. There are a few experiences that really are human across all boundaries. Certainly the pandemic is one. Certainly dying is another. And it's really an honor to even be able to approach

those topics when I feel like, yes, I'm speaking about myself and from myself, but I'm really trying to see what the connection is to other people and other worlds. And, you know, like a lot of poets, I'm fairly solitary by nature, but I do feel I connect in this particular way, and I connect when I read other people's poems. I know you've had the same experience. It's just like, yes, that's our world. That's our world, and we get to respond to it. It's like an inner connection.

inner journalism or something. That's so well said, and I really appreciate you joining me today to talk about these poems and to share yours. Kevin, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Mother by Jim Moore, as well as Jane Mead's I Wonder If I Will Miss the Moss can be found on newyorker.com. Jane Mead's last book was To the Wren, New and Collected Poems. Jim Moore's forthcoming collection is Enter.

You may subscribe to this podcast, the Fiction Podcast, the Writer's Voice Podcast, and the Politics & More podcast by searching for The New Yorker in your podcast app. You can hear more poetry read by the authors on newyorker.com and the New Yorker app, available from the App Store or from Google Play. The theme music is The Corner by Chief Zion Atunde-Ajuwa, courtesy of Stretch Music and Robodope.

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