A Playlist for the October 2019 Issue

For our October 2019 playlist, we asked contributor torrin a. greathouse, whose poems “Medusa with the Head of Perseus,” “Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs,” and “Litany of Ordinary Violences” appear in the issue, to curate a selection of music for us. You can read about her approach to creating the playlist below. Click here to open the playlist in your Spotify app.

The funny thing about poems and playlists is that, for me, they both emerge from a similar locus of obsession. So when I was asked to write the playlist for this month’s issue of Poetry, I dove into it with that neurotic quality. I spent hours reading and rereading the issue, scrutinizing the songs I was considering, and trying to capture my experience of each poem.

For some poems, such as Joyce Carol Oates’s “Little Albert, 1920,” this was a decision based on narrative. For others, like Carl Phillips’s “This Far In,” I tried to pair the poem with a song that evoked for me the sonic textures of the work. In others, I let the images guide me, or tried to complement the poem’s intent. This process, perhaps a unique form of close reading, created in me a deep kind of resonance with the poems—maybe something akin to two notes being struck to form a rudimentary chord.