Joanna Klink and Holly Amos on psychic longing, attention and attunement, and their differing childhood dinner tables

This week, Holly Amos speaks with Joanna Klink, who joins us from Austin, Texas. Klink is the author of five books of poetry, most recently The Nightfields, and she shares some new poems that appear in the February 2023 issue of Poetry. If described directly, the poems feature the mundane, yet they carry a deep sense of unease. Amos states, “The unease is gorgeous, and the gorgeous is uneasy.” Speaking toward that uneasiness, Amos and Klink get into psychic longing, time and aging, attention and attunement, death, and their very different childhood dinner tables. We also hear Muriel Rukeyser, an important influence for Klink’s poem “Called,” speaking in 1959 about the role of the poet in society.

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