Naomi Fry: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Nomi Fry.
Vinson Cunningham: I'm Vincent Cunningham.
Alex Schwartz: And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here, my friends.
Hello. Hello. Hi. Hello.
How are you guys?
Vinson Cunningham: good.
Naomi Fry: I mean, I've been better.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, it's, it's hard times right now. A lot of us in the world are grieving. There are wars going on. There are assassinations that have recently happened. We see news about very traumatic and stressful deportations every day.
So I think that many of us share this feeling that the world is changing very fast and for the worse, and we don't have any control. So what I wanna ask you guys just, just start is to what extent do you guys turn to art? In, in times like these to help make sense of these feelings.
Naomi Fry: I don't know if I turn to art to make sense, particularly of these feelings. Like, it's not like I would necessarily reach for say, war and peace to see how people have gotten through war. You know what I mean? Like, it, it doesn't need to be a kind of one-to-one relationship. But I do think  there is a comfort in, um, thinking about. The world being able to produce, beauty or, or to produce meaning when things feel chaotic. And I will note too, that I decided to get off social media a couple days ago, uh, because it seemed to me the exact opposite of kind of like going to art.
And I love social media, no shade. But I think in times like these where everything feels so crazy and horrible, things are happening every second. Um, for me it's better to go the
Alex Schwartz: kind of like, works that try to deal with things from, uh, a perspective, Not an immediate
Naomi Fry: reaction. Not an immediate reaction, exactly.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Vinson, how about you?
Vinson Cunningham: Um, similarly to what Naomi said, I don't choose artworks to go to necessarily because of the times, whether they be personal or political, but I do tend to read things in light of what's going on.
You know, that my way of ingesting whatever it is that I'm reading, looking at, listening to has this like interpretive cast where what is outside has no choice but to come into that process. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. That it's colored by. That's right. The reality. Yeah. and I think that's how we look at all art, whether things are good or bad or it's, it's going to be colored by what we bring to it and what's going on.
 and that brings me to something that we're gonna talk about today, which is a new book called Things in Nature Merely Grow. It's by the writer Yiyun Li, who has written many books, fiction and nonfiction, and many of them that deal with grief and with grieving. And this book in particular goes right to the heart of this subject because Things in Nature Merely Grow is a memoir that is dedicated to Yiyun’s son James, who died by suicide in 2024.
And I think we should say just at the top that this is an addition to an earlier book that Yiyun Li wrote called Where Reasons End that was written in the months after her first son Vincent, died also by suicide in 2017. So. just in the spirit of, what art can do in times like these. I'm really glad and actually relieved to be talking about this book with you guys today. because grief is, grief is a profoundly isolating experience it cuts you off. If you're in mourning from the lost person, it cuts you off from people around you, but it also really cuts you off from yourself. There's a before and an after person you were, and a person you are now, and it's a point of division in a life.
And so the big question I have for us today is what can, or what should art that deals with grief directly offer to the rest of us? Should it try to be a source of consolation or a companionship? Or is it enough just to offer a frank accounting of grief, one of the hardest parts of being alive? So that's today on critics at Large: why we turn grief into art.
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Alex Schwartz: Okay, so we're gonna start with this book, “Things In Nature Merely Grow” by Yiyun Li. let's just get right into it, guys. Does anyone wanna give a quick synopsis of what this book is about?
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I can try. So Alex, as you said, he only dedicates this book to her son James, who died last year, of suicide when he was 19, like a freshman in college. And this follows the earlier death of her son Vincent in 2017, also of suicide.
 and you know, Obviously we, we are all parents around this table. You don't have to be a parent, I think, to understand that this is the, probably the worst thing that can ever happen to a person, um, also not just to lose a child, to lose both your children. and Li talks about Greek tragedy. You know, it's as this sort of like, a life in extremity, you know, this limit case of like, how do you deal with life when the absolute worst happens and what is the role of grief in such a life?
Is there even a place for grief? And she has some doubts, interesting doubts in this book about what grief might mean  And so trying to work through that in the book is I think her, her goal.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. all of that is so true. And it also seems that if I had to describe the book, if I had to. I do. I I am being paid to describe it. Um,
Alex Schwartz: and more than that, I'm asking you to,
Vinson Cunningham: and my friend has asked me to, so now I have to, um, I would describe it as a work of criticism that is, uh, precisely about the gulf between. Feelings and facts.  Mm-hmm. And about, um, I was trying to find the word, and I think the word for what the subject of the book is, is precisely like articulation. Something 
happens and there is a gulf, an abyss between the fact of it and one's ability to sort of ferry that fact into the, the world of words. And, communicability,  One of the refrains of the book is like, there's no easy way to say this. This is, which is what the police officer first said to her, first with one son and then with the other.
Um, there's no easy way to say this becomes not only like this refrain in the book, but also kind of its ethos, the repetition of what happened becomes a kind of philosophy. Her son James, to whom this book is, chiefly addressed was a kind of philosopher.
and, and, and it's, yes, that does sort of produce itself as an abyss, as a kind of stasis, a a kind of hovering. but it's also, I think, in its way really generous. She says, Hey, if you want to hear euphemism, if you want, um, words that are a solace, this is not for you.
But by being, doggedly interested in trying to, to reach down to facts, I think there is a kind of, a really generous thing about that. I mean, I, for that reason, I did really appreciate this book.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I, I totally agree with that.
I mean, Vinson, you keep using this word abyss, and I think it's worth us pointing out that it is a word that Yiyun Li uses and keeps returning to. She says, I am in an abyss. If an abyss is where I shall be for the rest of my life, the abyss is my habitat. One should not waste energy fighting one's habitat.
I have only this abyss, which is my life. And you put something else out that, um, really, really strikes me about this book, which is, it is a work of philosophy, I think. And I think the philosophical problem is how to put into words and experience that is absolutely beyond words. you know, Ian writes a lot in this book about how easy writing is, which when I read it, I was like. Really? Is it, is it that easy? She's, she teaches writing at Princeton and she talks about how her students sometimes say, oh, I can't describe this. I can't do it. It's so hard. And she says, living is hard. Writing is easy. Yeah. Um, but writing about living is complicated. And that's what she's here to do.
She's here as a kind of messenger, I think, to describe one of the farthest points of human experience and to just illuminate it for the sake of doing that, for the sake of using language to explain it. And I did read in one sitting and I felt deeply entered into communication with it.
And, you know, I'm so grateful for that, which is a perverse word to use. I'm not grateful that these things happened. but I'm grateful that the language stretched across to find me. And I think this book is like in that way sublime, that words fail and fail and fail, but still they do something.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. It reminded me at various points, I, I kind of, you know, I jotted some notes in the margins, so on, as I often do. And a couple points. I, I wrote like, I can't go on. I'll go on.  I kept being reminded of this sort of like modernist principle, which emerged
partly in, in the wake of like the big wars, you know, It's like, what do you do when reality defies, comprehension, language is broken. And, um, it was a, a book that was difficult for me to read. Not, not difficult because it's, short, it's, it's like a quote unquote easy read. Uh, but it's, it describes an experience that I would honestly prefer to turn away from, because it's just so painful to consider.
And I think you said generous, Vinson. I think it's true, because I can't imagine how anyone could after experience this kind of thing, immediately as she has done, as Yiyun Li has done, sit down and begin to write. She wrote it in a couple months, I believe, after the death of James, and.
That in itself is extraordinary. And almost like, even if she didn't intend it, she certainly didn't intend it as a kind of a self-help, uh, book. Quite the opposite, in fact, I think. But, but it's,an extraordinary thing. and a rare thing.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I think so too. I had the weirdest reaction, I have to say. Mm-hmm. When I finished this book, I thought, this is a book I will be reading and rereading in my life. 
Vinson Cunningham: Interesting.
Alex Schwartz:  So much of this book is about trying to describe the undescribable. Yeah. Like that's what the title is about. Things in nature merely grow. life happens, life develops and life ends. Um, there's a lot about flowers. She's a very ardent gardener. 
And actually like. There is this line in this book., she says, the fact is, there's no word for this state I found myself in, in which lucidity and opacity are one in the same.
And so I think that was really my experience of reading the book of a kind of lightning flash of illumination, but also not being totally sure of what I'd seen. And maybe that explains why I felt, uh, oh, I will return to this to try to make sense of this again.
Vinson Cunningham:  Yeah. I love what you just said about, uh, lucidity and opacity because in a way it's a, again, work of criticism about narrative structures.
 And one of the deep things about this book is that it's like, to me, it's like a praise of clear speech. one of her friends after James dies, says to her, uh, you worked so hard to help James find a place in life, but he didn't want to be here.
It's this like very. Direct speech. And she has like ex-friend who try to cover her in euphemisms and talk about, well, God gave you Vincent, he doesn't want to be here anymore. All this fuzz and those people she's not with. And so she's also offering a friendship even as the practice of clear speech. She says, not many people would've had the moral strength to say that to me.
And those words reverberate in her mind over and over. 
Alex Schwartz: We're talking so much about language and Yiyun is such a precise user of language And I think it's very relevant. that she came to the United States from China. She was in her twenties. She's someone for whom English is a second language.
And I feel like when people write in their second languages, when these like geniuses come to us and just are able to play and, and work and use another language. And often one that I think like, not to put words in the mouth of Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Na Bov, um, but often people choose other languages because they feel that it's, they're giving them.
A means of expression, whether it's by alienation or whether it's by familiarity. You find something that wasn't available to you before or in the extremity being detached from your mother tongue. You find access to something else. But I I 
Naomi Fry: shout out me,
Alex Schwartz: out. You shout out Nomi Fry. Just live in daily life in our 
Naomi Fry: I mean, not to, not to compare myself to these geniuses, but it's true. I mean, it's an interesting experience to write in your second language. 
Alex Schwartz: You know what? You do it so naturally that it didn't even occur to me.
Naomi Fry: But it is easier for me to write in English and always has been  I'm interested in what you're saying because I do think that's kind of like a key thing in this book. Her ability to kind of like play with language and kind of like realize meanings of words that might be transparent perhaps to kind of a native speaker and writer.
Alex Schwartz: Exactly. like you have to, um, you know, go back to the root. And in this case the, what I wanted to ask you guys about was about, um, the word grief, 
and particularly I think that Yiyun is in a bit of a revolt against the word grief. And I wanna know if you think that that's justified or not. She said in an interview that she looks up the etymology of words often, which frankly is something that I think a native speaker often forgets to do.
And this is a good reminder that words come from somewhere and she notes that the word grief derives from burden. And so she rejects that because she says, my children, this isn't an interview she did with the guardian She says, my children were not my burden. My sadness is not my burden.
And in the book itself, she takes a stand, against grief. And because I've been reading out loud so much to us, I'm just gonna do it again. Let's go. I'm just doing it again. I love to go to the text. Please. often have to go to the
you must. Alright, so this is what she says. And this among other reasons is why I am against the word grief, which in contemporary culture seems to indicate a process that has an endpoint. The sooner you get there, the sooner you prove yourself to be a good sport at living and the less awkward people around you will feel. Sometimes people ask me where I am in the grieving process and I wonder whether they understand anything at all about losing someone.
How lonely the dead would feel if the living were to stand up from death shadow, clap their hands, dust their pants, and say to themselves, into the world, I am done with my grieving. From this point on it's life as usual business as usual. Does that definition of grief ring true to you guys?
Vinson Cunningham: Yes, the way that grief is commonly used in our culture, even though people say things like it's always with you, da, da, da, uh, generally it is described as this process. or it is kind of spoken about as a process that does have another side, even if it's not a sort of cleanly defined one. so I, I took her point there.
I have less of a problem with the word than, than she does. but I do think that, um, her distancing herself from the word is like a genre distinction because she is not writing a, a grief memoir. it is not.
A memoir of these happenings in her way of dealing with them necessarily. It, is a presentation of these, again, facts as a way to put pressure on a series of, questions and challenges and demands that she's making both of life and of death. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I think the other thing she's pushing against is the idea of the stages of grief.  the Kubler Ross stages of
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm.
Alex Schwartz: which is the idea that there are five stages of grief. You go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And I think that like the Kubler Ross idea is something that can be really helpful. And helping is okay to have a sense that this will not be an eternity. This will not always feel the same. It will feel different. But also it is a narrative as you keep saying Vincent, like it's its own narrative structure that, um, you know, there are five chapters to this book, and when you get to the end, you've reached acceptance, which seems like a really good thing. And like you too will be sitting beneath the lotus tree, you know, and,
and all will be well, or at least you'll be at peace. and Yiyun is saying, no, I absolutely reject that. And I reject, like, being pushed through this sense of feeling as if I'm at the car wash and I'm just like, yeah, can't get off the ride. But by the end I'll be squeaky clean and, and all will be well again,
Naomi Fry: the way she writes about tragedy resists everything we're taught in our culture. Yeah, I think it's, it's interesting because on the one hand, in some ways to the kind of untrained eye, we might think that the way Li behaves, as she describes it, at least in this book, in the wake of her sons’ deaths, is the kind of like model citizen way to, to deal with tragedy.
It's like, uh, get back to work. You know, like, yeah, no, I'm not gonna miss my class teaching my students. I'm not gonna, I. Not make dinner. I'm not gonna let my garden fall into disrepair because this horrible thing just happened. But she makes this distinction in the writing where she says, no, no, don't get it wrong.
It's the fact that I'm like up and at ‘em immediately doesn't mean that I'm dusting off this death and going on my merry way. That grief is over grief or whatever you want to call it. will never be over. 
And there is something about that, that I found very clear-eyed, like the, the concurrent realization that if you are choosing to go on living After you know this horrible thing that has happened to you, then you will be in the abyss forever.
Yet you also in, in kind of like a parallel timeline as quickly as possible, you need to return to the things that allow you to live life, even if it's a life, completely shaded by tragedy. And you know, I know I said earlier that going to art to learn about how to deal with stuff that's going on in the world directly in a kind of like one-to-one relationship is not something I necessarily do.
But now that so many terrible things are happening and kind of like worry and despair grip us, and yet we must go on living. We must take our kid to school. We must cook dinner. We must prepare for the podcast that we co-host. We must write because we have deadlines. We must call our parents and make sure they're okay.
You know, these things continue side by side. you know, And it's, it is a lesson.
Vinson Cunningham: No, that's beautiful.
Alex Schwartz: In a minute: Art about grief can take as many forms and offer as many perspectives as there are artists. This is critics at large from The New Yorker
:: MIDROLL 1 :: 
Alex Schwartz: we've been talking about the new book, things in Nature, merely Grow by Ian Lee. And I wanna do what we love to do, which is to go wide and consider some other works that talk about grief in interesting ways. Who wants to start? I really am so curious what you guys wanna discuss here.
Vinson Cunningham: certainly, my mind goes to,the year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Which chronicles the year after her husband, John Gregory Dunne passed, and also during which her daughter, Quintana Roo also fell sick and ended up dying a year later.
and, it starts by narrating the, the death of, of Dunne and, um, the sort of being in the house and all of the sort of the immediacy of the chaos, but also the kind of mental stillness of that moment and, and moves forward, proceeds, As to my mind, more of a sort of, um, chronicle of events.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, my, that book was absolutely huge. I mean,
Naomi Fry: it was huge.
Alex Schwartz: It came out in 2005. Anyone can fact check me, but I'm just going from my memory. No, it's tough. Yeah. I'm getting, I'm getting nods in the studio. It was 2005, That book was, it was very, very big and I think one reason for it, I think it's such a worthy, um,
Comparison in its own way to things in nature merely grow because it is also trying for lucidity. It is also in Didion's famous style, that famous clear and exacting style, which can reveal so much. And also talk about lucidity and opacity hides so much depending on what the writer wants to shine a light on. It's also trying to, like, as you say, Vinson, put down an order of events simply for sanity's sake, like mm-hmm.
To be grounded in reality, because the whole point of the title, and in some ways the point of the book is about the difficulty, the impossibility of accepting this loss. Mm-hmm.
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm.
Alex Schwartz: And I think the struggle in language to present something that is impossible to grasp very clearly is, is at the heart of what makes this book really beautiful and gives it a lot of pathos.
Naomi Fry: I wonder what I would think about this book right now. I remember reading it when I. When it came out. I remember being entirely unmoved by the year of magical thinking.
Alex Schwartz: Interesting.
Naomi Fry: But again, this was 20 years ago maybe I. Would feel differently now, but it somehow, that famous Didion style didn't work for me in that context. I weirdly didn't believe her. I remember,
Alex Schwartz: Sorry.
Vinson Cunningham: believe her in her accounting of events or in the, in the tone, the tenor of her, the, the, the poise in which she 
Naomi Fry: The poise. annoyed me. I remember. But this was 20 years ago. And I will say one thing I, I like when people talk about, um. Grief, I guess when people try to depict the experience in their art, is the notion of mixed feelings Which is obviously not the case with the Yiyun Li book. I don't think there can be any mixed feelings when your child dies. God forbid. But I think it's very interesting to think about being kind of like grieving but ambivalent, uh,
Alex Schwartz: a little bit happy, someone 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. or knowing that person wasn't necessarily a saint or your relationship with them wasn't necessarily untroubled.
Alex Schwartz: So do you have an example? Like
Naomi Fry: Yeah, I have a couple of examples that I were thinking about.
It's interesting, um, thinking about Didion because recently there's this memoir uh, by Molly Jung Fast, uh, called How to Lose Your Mother and. It's not about death, it's about a kind of death in life. It's about her mother. Erica Jong the, the famous feminist novelist, wrote Fear of Flying.
 and how over recent years, she has progressively been losing her mind. So she is still living. and yet not really with us. 
you know, and actually she talks about Didion and how Didion was always like her mother, Erica Jong was like a, kind of like the, quote unquote stupid version of Didion, you know, she was kind of like, the less, less, the less August, you know, kind of like woman of letters.
She was more popular. and likewise this memoir is kind of like more jokey and  less like  a big work of art. It's kind of more of a, but it's, I liked it, because it's kind of like, okay, my mom was a terrible mom basically is what she says.
And now I, I am stuck having to take care of her. I love her. I was obsessed with her, you know, she was my idol my entire life. But I also. Recognized her as deeply, deeply flawed. And now I'm stuck with this like essential vegetable, you know, having to sort of like, deal with it. And also having my husband be sick at the same time.
And, you know, life is kind of like hard and complicated and I'm grieving, but I'm also mad and I'm, you know, there's a litany of other kind of feelings Yeah. About, what is happening. which I like, you know, I mean the, the kind of like existence of so-called ugly feelings in a realm that is supposed to be kind of like sacred and holy.
Yeah.  it comes from the gut. It seems like another, work of art about grief that I was thinking about that is, I think a great work of art. But that's similarly is about a complicated person who, who, brings up a variety of feelings from the people left Behind is songs for Drella, the Lou Reed and John Cale album.
 From 1990, which, uh, deals with the death of Andy Warhol, and it's a kind of tribute to his life and death. And Reed and Cale's relationship with, with Andy Warhol was very difficult. He was a difficult person. They were difficult people, especially Lou Reed. he, uh, kind of fostered them when they were in the velvet under gown. He was the band's first manager.
He like produced quote unquote their first album, designed the cover, and they grew up with him in, the factory. And, uh, they were like constantly fighting. They like hated each other, you know, in a lot of ways. Uh, but also he was incredibly important to them  And so in songs for Drella. If, if you youngsters don't know it, I really encourage you to 
Alex Schwartz: listen I don't know it. I feel ashamed. 
Naomi Fry: so, it's so good. so it's like a dozen songs. It's like a series of songs that are basically the biography of Warhol. Like, He was a nobody. He came to New York, he got famous, he befriended Capote. You know, all of the things we know about Warhol, and then about his relationship with them and his relationship with the velvets, and then how people accuse him of like using people and, ruining people's lives for kind of fun and profit.
 and then it ends with the kind of like Lou Reed singing this song. Hello. It's me. And it's about like saying goodbye to him. 
        CLIP: HELLO IT’S ME
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, no, me listening to that. I get what you're saying. You want a tonal mix of it. You don't want works about loss to somehow come in with their a Vaseline lens and to be like, oh look, everything was beautiful. Let's, you know, put someone up on a pedestal.Let's,let's Pretend that reality wasn't reality. You like the complex human nature.
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. In 
Alex Schwartz: Mm-hmm. And I think
that's worthy and true because otherwise the person being grieved is not a person at all. Right. There is no, you know, like humanity there. There's just a kind of false image of humanity Yeah. Yeah. I also like a tonal mix a little
bit. I mean, I can go in all different kinds of directions, but it is occurring to me that there has been a recent series of comedy specials about grief, which is so interesting to me, and I'm curious what you guys think about this. Like just off the top of my head, mark Marin did one about the sudden death of his partner called From Bleak to Dark.
I just watched Sarah Silverman's new special called Postmortem about a period in her life in the last year or two when her dad and her stepmom died within days of each other, and she and her sisters were in like these caregiving positions. There's Rachel Bloom's death. Let me do my special, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I interviewed Rachel Bloom about this last year.  and that special is interesting because it's about friendship, which is also what, um, this like Andy Warhol song is About, It's about losing a friend. in Rachel Bloom's case, she lost her, writing partner and close friend Adam Schlesinger.
They'd worked together on her TV show. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. They were working on other projects and he was one of the first casualties of COVID in that early March period. And she also gave birth at around that time. So a lot of craziness was going on in her life and she makes it really. Not all of it, but some part of it she makes very, very funny. Um,
Naomi Fry: It is a comedy special.
Alex Schwartz: is a comedy special. And I think she uses humor as do all of these comedians 'cause they are comedians as a way of coping, but also because that's their lens on the world. And sometimes things all happen at once. Sometimes things are terrible and something else is funny and it's a bizarre mix.
And so there are a lot of parts of, um, death. Let me do my special that I really recommend. I mean, just watch it. It's one hour. I think many people will enjoy it.
And it's also dealing with not experience of a child's death, but because she gave birth in March, 2020, amidst all this chaos. And her daughter had various issues when she was born about fear, about the kind of fear of death that comes with being a parent. and Vince and I actually remember us talking about this right after you had your, your daughter just being like, can I keep this thing alive?
Like, what is this? Like last
Vinson Cunningham: night I was putting my hand on her chest to make sure I do this ev like every like 30 minutes. Like is this thing still on?
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. what's the deal here? And so. What Rachel Bloom does in her special is to weave these ideas, to use humor, to speak to something that is so scary and like cliche calls it unimaginable, but here we are, imagining it all the time.
        CLIP: RACHEL BLOOM 
And what I loved about seeing the show and the special was that you feel and, and is the point of this stuff to ma ke you feel less alone? I don't know. I don't think so necessarily, but that's surely the point of some stuff. Mm-hmm. So like, seeing Rachel bloom cradle a flashlight like it’s her infant daughter and singing the song “Please Don’t Die” to it… you’re like “ah. It’s not just me.” We can speak some of these fears, um, in this very funny way.
After another break, what are we seeking from our grief texts and how does that change depending on what's going on in the world?
This is critics at large from the New Yorker
:: MIDROLL 2 :: 
Alex Schwartz:  So we've been exploring different ways that artists approach grief and make it into material or reuse it to inform their work. And  it really brings me back to one of the first grief texts that I really remember encountering. Like I know there were earlier ones, like I'm sure there was a. Bernstein bear.
There was a little house on the pr fine, but I'm talking about  a Victorian poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson, Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
Naomi Fry: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Alex Schwartz: never understood it, still don't understand
Naomi Fry: Have no idea how this happened. And yet we forge 
Alex Schwartz: wish I understood why that comma was where it is. And listeners, if you know, write to us at the mail@newyorker.com. in subject line critics tenon, comma. I would like to understand it at last. Um, but I did read Tenon in high school in a Victorian poetry class. Shout out Susan Seor
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm.
Alex Schwartz: and. The poem we focused on, or that I remember us focusing on quite a bit was Tennyson's poem in Memoria, A HH, which was written for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Yes. Arthur
Naomi Fry: Henry. Arthur Henry Hallam,
Alex Schwartz: who died when he was 22. This is the poem by the way, that contains the lines to his better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. And what Tennyson did was he spent 17 years mm-hmm.
Working on this very long poem in memoriam, a tiny chunk of which I had to memorize, which I think is great. We should all have to memorize more poetry.
Vinson Cunningham: that great.
Alex Schwartz: But a chunk of, I didn't have to memorize, I was reading over and I thought, aha, this is really getting at some of my questions for our conversations.
So I just wanna read this little piece of this, the stanza from a section of the poem to you. Tennyson writes,  I sometimes hold it half a sin to put in words the grief I feel for
words like nature. Half reveal and half conceal the soul within. But for the unquiet heart and brain, a use in measured language lies the sad mechanic exercise like dull narcotics, numbing pain in words like weeds.
I'll wrap me or like courses, clothes against the cold. But that large grief, which these unfold is given an outline and no more.  What I love about this and what I find very moving about this passage is Tennyson is writing this very long poem to try to convey his love for his friend, his experience of sorrow and grief.
And he's saying, and this is towards the top of the poem. about how he doesn't think his poem can do what he wants it to do. How words, as Yiyun Li says, fall short. And that makes me wanna ask you guys, what do you think the point of depicting grief in art is? If words are gonna fall short, if depiction is gonna fall short, then why do we do it? What can we hope to get from it?
Naomi Fry: I mean, I think this is a question that's true of art in general. what's the point?  why do we try to depict life? Why do we try to depict ideas? Why do we try to depict relationships between people? I think it's a mixed bag. You know,  for the artist, it is in some ways a selfish proposition. Probably selfish, not in any bad way, but just a, self-directed proposition, let's say. Writing or, or, or composing or painting or whatever it is, in order to come to terms with, with an experience, But I think in art in general, in most art, there has to be a desire to, to connect. You know, there has to be a desire to somehow ameliorate or explicate or at least articulate the, the experience the person is going through. 
for the person to receive it, for like a missive to pass between these two people. Um, even if it seems impossible. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. for me, art is the place, and not just tonally, but in, its making the way that subject matter rubs up against,  sort of clangs in its encounter with form. Um, it is a place that can admit multiple meanings, multiple feelings, Simultaneity.  Yeah. What I like about the Tennison poem is like that four beat. Rhythm. The, iambic tetrameter, the
like, it is kind of an enactment of things in nature merely grow. Like it sounds like life just keeps on going on and then you have to do the stuff and da da even as it like tries to carve out these, this like logic of beginnings and finalities and all this, all of the strange off rhythms of life.
The poem just keeps on going on and then hit, do you know, so like in some way lyric poetry is the best place to look for why we would come to art to do this, which is that, even in formal qualities and how they encase our subject matter, the particularities of our experience. just that meeting form and life is a kind of.
A way of revealing things. and it's not just like, here, let me tell you what happened. But the relaying itself, the putting it into form is a way, lessons, even if they're not meant, just they appear, they show up. there is a kind of faith that like if I try to relay this and I try to do it within the confines of form, something will emerge.
That to me is the reason.
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. And form is such an interesting question because like, the human form has only one conclusion. Mm-hmm.  and yet it hits us differently every time. When we talk about formal, we're all such like.
There's so many things you can say about grief and art, and we've only like barely touched on music, which of course can give feeling like nothing else can to just the emotions without words, which I think is sometimes hugely needed. Like just release, just release through emotion through music. And I think, like if I were to say what I think some writing about grief or depiction of it can do so many different things. It can try to conjure someone back up. It can be magical thinking,  It can be a, a testament, but also it can just transmit experience. And that itself can be cathartic. For the artists, perhaps for the readers, but it's a point of connection. And like, you know, when we were thinking about this episode, I just kept thinking about
One of the great 20th century art projects, which is the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Mm-hmm.
Naomi Fry: Yes, absolutely.
Vinson Cunningham: You
Alex Schwartz: You know, the, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was first imagined in 1985 by Cleve Jones. And actually when I was reading about it, I'd forgotten this.
You know, we've just dealt with these horrible assassinations in Minnesota, and when I was reading about it, I was reminded that, Jones had organized this candlelight vigil to honor, um, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Mascon of San Francisco after their assassinations in 1978. And the AIDS Memorial QuiltYou know, ended up being this project in which people could bear witness, could make a memorial
for mm-hmm. Others who had died from aids. They could make panels of what would become this enormous quilt.  And when it was first shown, it was in 1987 and it was displayed on the National Mall in Washington, DC and you know, obviously it's a political symbol.
Hello. It's a huge quilt saying to the government, what the hell are you doing? People are dying. Where is our solution? where are our leaders? Um, a question that is only grown more relevant, um.
But it's so beautiful to me. I, I don't, I don't know if this like moves you guys in the same way. It moves me so much because it's so personal.
Because it's not one person's like testament to their, the whole grandeur of their experience, which is important. There's a place for that. We love that stuff. Like we live for that stuff. Let's be real.
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah.
Alex Schwartz: But it's about the collective. It's about saying we are sharing this, we are stitching ourselves together. Um, this matters. People matter. Life matters. Their deaths matter and it still matters.
Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex, this reminds me, I was, um, at the beginning of the episode, I spoke out against social media vis-a-vis art,  But I have to say, there is this account on Instagram that I follow that I absolutely love, it's called AIDS Memorial. And it's people bearing witness. It's, each post is. uh, an account of a person who has died of aids written by someone who was close to this person.
 and it's so incredibly touching because it's these stories, you know, of, of like random quote unquote people. These were not most famous people, unfamous people. I mean, very occasionally there is someone who is, is more notable. Sure. Um, but it's mostly just like, you know, like there was one recently that was so moving. It was, uh. a
A woman who wrote about her sister, who was mentally challenged in some way and was always kind of bullied, made fun of, She became, uh, a drug addict, a prostitute and ended up becoming sick with, you know, hiv aids and, dying.
And so this is a very complicated and made life very complicated for her family. And yet it's, she was a person and this was her story.
and just having this testament to her life having been lived, it's just so incredibly, so incredibly touching.
Vinson Cunningham: and what this all makes me think of too is that, um, we are kind of asking the why, right? Why, why do this? And, um, there is a difference, I think, but a very still a kind of intimacy between one kind of mourning, or one kind of expression of grief that is, private.
 even though you are kind of bearing witness to, or, talking about the death of someone that maybe the writer knows, but you, the reader don't know. But this is often put to the test in cases of, public or political grief,  
And, um, how do you make, add those stories up into one expression that can contain what we all felt in public? I really like this poem. it's called G nine. It's by the poet Mark Delugos, and it's about his time living in an AIDS ward. He, he's dying, um, and he's, he's telling these little stories about his friends in it again, formally, right?
It's a long-ish poem with very short lines as if like, you know, shortness of breath, not enough time to tell the story. and he's been telling all these anecdotes and he says, when I pass, who will remember, who will care about these joys and wonders? I'm haunted by that more than by the faces of the dead and dying.
He's having this intensely personal experience, but he knows that it. All of these deaths. All of these deaths in the, in the middle of the crisis adds up to a library of these losses, these, these, these stories going and going and going away. Um, 
it seems to me, I don't know about you guys, but it does seem to me that I now, as another of those times, even though it's maybe not one great monolith, like aids, we talk about war, we talk about hunger, we talk about all the things that happen in our world now. I do feel a struggle to commensurate what
what happens. You know, like Nomi, you talked about social media, and it seems to me that like some of the impulse of social media, whether it is by video or you know, it, it is trying to say, no, no, no, this is being recorded. but I think part of the art making impulse is yes, but recording is not enough that we need to apply the pressures of, thought, the pressures of feeling right. To to turn all that recording into some kind of revelation. 
Alex Schwartz: This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Michele O'Brien with help from Danielle Hewitt. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Cuadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Jake Lummus with Mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of critics at large at New yorker.com/critics.