Our lives are filled with distances, the physical spans that we travel but also the stranger, vaster expanses between our past and our present or between feeling anchored and connected and feeling terribly alone. A poem can capture all of those in a way that a map can’t, as Elisa Gonzalez superbly demonstrates in “To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self.”
Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her work appears in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Paris Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University MFA program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Rolex Foundation, and the U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her debut poetry collection is Grand Tour (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2023).
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
We’re pleased to offer Elisa Gonzalez’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.
Conor Kerr — Winter Songs
Valencia Robin — The Coup
Eugenia Leigh — How the Dung Beetle Finds Its Way Home
Poetry Unbound — Season 8 Trailer
Clint Smith with Krista Tippett — What We Know in the "Marrow of Our Bones"
BONUS: Truth-seeking and the Symphony of Language with Henri Cole
BONUS: Making Space for the Erotic with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
BONUS: Poetry That Pays Attention with Patricia Smith
Maya C. Popa — They Are Building a Hospital
Jenny Mitchell — A Man in Love with Plants
Vidyan Ravinthiran — Artist
Mark Turcotte — Dear New Blood
Wo Chan — the smiley barista remembers my name
Amanda Gunn — Ordinary Sugar
J. Estanislao Lopez — Alternate Ending: The Escape of Jephthah’s Daughter
BONUS: A Conversation with Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe
Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe — Blue
Charif Shanahan — Present Moment
Brenda Cárdenas — This Is Why
Nithy Kasa — Blouse
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
On Being with Krista Tippett
Anne of Green Gables
Great Expectations
Becoming Wise