Gregory Pardlo — Wishing Well

What’s a chance encounter in a city that’s never left you? 

In this poem the speaker is asked a question by a stranger while standing near the water outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. “Pardon me Old School he / says you know is this a wishing well?” He initially brushes off the stranger, but something happens: a shared coin, a well, a wish that is answered as it is made.

Gregory Pardlo won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection Digest. He is poetry editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review (VQR) and Director of the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden. His most recent book is Air Traffic, a memoir in essays.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org