A.O. Scott on the Joy of Close Reading Poetry

Some time ago, the British journalist Sophie Elmhirst was reporting a story about people who try to escape the land and to live on the water. “I found myself trolling around as you do in these moments, online and on a website devoted to castaway stories and shipwreck stories,” she tells host Gilbert Cruz. “There were lots of photographs and tales of lone wild men who were pitched up on desert islands and had various escapades. And in among all of these was a tiny little black-and-white picture of a man and a woman."The couple were Maurice and Maralyn Bailey, a husband and wife who took to the seas from 1970s England, selling their suburban home to buy a boat and sail to New Zealand. Nine months into the trip, a sperm whale breached under their boat, leaving them stranded on a crude raft with an assortment of salvaged items, luckily including water, canned food, a camera — and a biography of King Richard III. Elmhirst tells the Baileys’ story in her new book, “A Marriage at Sea." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

“Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”: So reads one of the great opening lines in British literature, the first sentence of Virginia Woolf’s classic 1925 novel, “Mrs. Dalloway.”The book tracks one day in the life of an English woman, Clarissa Dalloway, living in post-World War I London, as she prepares for, and then hosts, a party. That’s pretty much it, as far as the plot goes. But within that single day, whole worlds unfold, as Woolf captures the expansiveness of human experience through Clarissa’s roving thoughts. On this week’s episode, Book Club host MJ Franklin discusses it with his colleagues Joumana Khatib and Laura Thompson.Other books mentioned in this episode:“The Passion According to G.H.,” by Clarice Lispector“A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing,” by Eimear McBride“The Lesser Bohemians,” by Eimear McBride“To the Lighthouse,” by Virginia Woolf“Orlando,” by Virginia Woolf“A Room of One’s Own,” by Virginia Woolf“The Hours,” by Michael Cunningham“Headshot,” by Rita Bullwinkel“Tilt,” by Emma Pattee Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

On this week's episode, A.O. Scott joins host Gilbert Cruz to talk about the value of close reading poetry. And New York Times Book Review poetry editor Greg Cowles recommends four recently published collections worth reading.Books mentioned in this episode* "New and Collected Hell: A Poem," by Shane McCrae* "Ominous Music Intensifying," by Alexandra Teague* "Ecstasy: Poems," by Alex Dimitrov* "New and Selected Poems," by Marie Howe Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Steven Spielberg’s movie “Jaws” hit theaters 50 years ago this month, in June 1975, and became a phenomenon almost instantly. In some ways that was no surprise: The Peter Benchley novel it was based on, also called “Jaws,” had been a huge best seller the year before, and the public was primed for a fun summer scare. Brian Raftery — the author of “Best. Movie. Year. Ever: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen” — wrote about “Jaws” for the Book Review last year in honor of the novel’s 50th anniversary, and this week he visits the podcast to talk about the book, the movie adaptation and the era of blockbuster thrillers.“If you’ve seen ‘Jaws,’ you could probably guess what the opening chapter of the book is,” he tells Gilbert Cruz (who has indeed seen “Jaws,” dozens of times). “It’s this shark attack, where this shark at night just devours this young female swimmer. The writing is really fun. It’s really gnarly, and it’s one of those amazing opening chapters where the book is moving as fast as the shark. After you read that first chapter, you are just completely pulled in.”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review’s podcast in general. You can send them to [email protected]. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In S.A. Cosby’s latest thriller, “King of Ashes,” a successful and fast-living financial adviser is called suddenly back to the small Virginia hometown he fled, where his family runs the local crematory and his father is in a coma stemming from a car crash that may not be as accidental as it seems.Cosby himself is from a small Virginia town, and on this week’s podcast he discusses the allure of homecoming, the tricky emotional terrain of complicated families and the reason he keeps revisiting the rural South in his fiction.“Once manufacturing moved out of these places, these rural places, there was nothing left to replace it. But crime — crime is America’s great secret industry. It’s our great secret empire. And when the legitimate businesses leave, crime steps in the fold. Nature abhors a vacuum, so crime steps in to fill that place. And I wanted to talk about cities like that." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

MJ Franklin, who hosts the Book Review podcast’s monthly book club, says that whenever someone asks him, “What should I read next?,” Yael van der Wouden’s “The Safekeep” has become his go-to recommendation. So he was particularly excited to discuss the novel on this week’s episode.Set in the Netherlands in 1961, “The Safekeep” is one of those books it’s best not to know too much about, as part of its delight is discovering its secrets unspoiled. As the reviewer for The New York Times coyly wrote in her piece about the book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024: “What a quietly remarkable book. I’m afraid I can’t tell you too much about it.”Here are some other books discussed in this week’s episode:“The Torqued Man,” by Peter Mann“The Little Stranger,” by Sarah Waters“Mice 1961,” by Stacey Levine“The New Life,” by Tom Crewe Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Alison Bechdel rose to fame as the creator of a long-running alt-weekly comic strip before jumping to an even wider audience by way of her celebrated graphic memoirs “Fun Home” and “Are You My Mother?” Her new book, “Spent,” is a graphic novel — but it was originally meant to be another memoir, as Bechdel tells Gilbert Cruz on this week’s podcast.“Over the years that I turned myself from being a comic strip writer into a memoirist, I got very sort of self-righteous about memoir as a genre,” Bechdel says. “I just thought, why would you bother making anything up? Life is incredible. It’s all right there. It’s served up on a platter every day. Write about that. My friends who are fiction writers would say, You’re able to tell a deeper kind of truth with fiction, don’t you think? And I would agree with them, but secretly I would think, no, you can’t. You’ve got to tell the actual truth. But that does get really tiresome. It gets tiring." Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.