A Playlist for the January 2018 Issue

For our January 2018 playlist, we asked contributor Paige Lewis to curate a selection of music for us. You can read about their approach to creating the playlist below. Click here to open the playlist in your Spotify app.

Making this playlist, I had to fight off the urge to pair every poem with a pop-punk song—can you imagine reading Li-Young Lee’s “Three Words” while listening to The Ergs!? I mean, sure, the poem and the band name rhyme, but that’s pretty much the only connection I can make.

After a lot of reading, a lot of listening, and a little panic, I came to the conclusion that the playlist wanted to be a collection of instrumental music. Maybe I’m too easily distracted, but when I read poetry, listening to anything besides instrumental music (or music with low, unobtrusive vocals) can pull me right out of the poem. I don’t want to be pulled out of these poems. The poets in this issue of Poetry have created beautiful, complex worlds, and I hope that the songs I’ve chosen (one for each poem) further immerse you in those worlds.