The poetry scholar Kamran Javadizadeh recently launched a fun and edifying new podcast called “Close Readings.” As Javadizadeh describes it, each week he “talks to a different leading scholar of poetry about a single short poem that the guest has loved. You’ll have a chance to see the poem from the expert’s perspective—and also to think about some big questions: How do poems work? What can they make happen? How might they change our lives?”

You can find episodes of “Close Readings” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts, and you can (and should!) also sign up to receive a newsletter from Kamran, in which he sends program notes, links, and summaries of each episode.

Last month, I had the delightful opportunity myself to go on the podcast to discuss one of my favorite John Ashbery poems, “Street Musicians,” the first poem in his 1977 book Houseboat Days. Kamran and I talk about Ashbery’s life and work in general, before turning to this haunting and beautiful poem of mid-career, which I read as an elegiac poem about what it’s like to outlive a friend or brother, and about Ashbery “feeling called to move on” — from his friend Frank O’Hara’s death, from his own youth, from living on the margins.  (An excerpt from my first book about “Street Musicians” can be found here, too). You can listen to our discussion of this poem here, or on Spotify, etc), and you can also read Kamran’s comments about our conversation here.