The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Two­-State Solution, and a Standing Desk Problem

Episode Date: January 20, 2017

We take the temperature of the Middle East peace process. Plus, Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry, Run the Jewels’ oldster rap, and the life­saving benefits of a standing desk.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

These are just anecdotes, but it's building up into something more coherent. I think it'd be interesting to really try to unravel what his ties. There's a sort of country-city divide for their own convenient, and then it's not clear where it goes next. From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. David.

Hey, how are you? I'm fine. How are you? Just swell. Everything in the world is going perfectly. Yes. It's our dream world. That's Marav McHale, a Labour Party member of the Israeli parliament. And if she's sarcastic about the state of things today, it's because being a liberal in Israel these days isn't any easier than being a liberal in the United States or Europe.

The way political trends are going at Israel, the hardliners, people like the defense minister of Vigdor Lieberman, are beside themselves. You're probably aware of the fact that when you ask Avigdo Liberman, how he is, he always says, heaven. Oh, God.

One of the things that has pleased the right in Israel so much is the changing of the guard in the United States. The Obama administration's ambition to make peace failed miserably. We've got to acknowledge that. The relation between the two countries is at an all-time low. And the nuclear treaty with Iran enraged the Israeli government further.

By the end, Obama and Netanyahu could hardly stand each other. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is sending to Israel as an ambassador, a man after Benjamin Netanyahu's own ideological heart, maybe even more right-wing. David Friedman is a lawyer who raised money for the settlements in the West Bank, and he's against any concessions at all to the Palestinians. He's called a liberal Zionist group in the United States, worse than the country. capos in the concentration camps, the Jews who were forced to work for the Nazis in places like Auschwitz. The status quo in Israel is just fine by him. Now, I've been writing about that part of the world for a very long time since the high watermark of the Oslo Peace Accords, and it seems to me, after so many failed attempts at negotiations, so much violence, so much

terrorism, incitement, so much distrust and repression and uprising, that we've reached a point now that's called a frozen conflict. John Kerry in one of his last acts as Obama's Secretary of State issued a dark warning about what it all means. Today there are a number, there are a similar number

of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one state or they can separate into two states. But here is a fundamental reality.

If the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic. It cannot be both. And it won't ever really be at peace. Moreover, the Palestinians will never fully realize their vast potential in a homeland of their own with a one-state solution. Today we're going to get three perspectives on the prospects for a two-state solution.

Is it dead or is it just on ice? I'll talk with a liberal member of the Israeli parliament, a Palestinian pollster, and an Israeli diplomat, Benjamin Netanyahu's man in New York. Now let's rewind for a second. For 50 years now, Israel has faced a question about what to do with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Territory it seized from its neighbors in the Six-Day War of 1960. territories that are tactically important but also have biblical and political significance for so many. For much of that time, the official goal for a peace settlement has been the two-state solution,

meaning a sovereign, demilitarized state for the Palestinian Arabs, with guarantees of recognition and lasting security for Israel. At the same time, Israelis have also built communities throughout the West Bank. Now, to some extent, it's the same spirit that Americans build suburbs. more room, cheaper housing. But many settlers see the West Bank, which they call Judean Samaria, as promised to them by God. It's theirs. And that's what makes it so charged.

And what's more, they build settlements precisely to make a Palestinian state almost impossible to imagine. And in recent years, it's the settlers who have set the dominant tone of politics in Israel. Every politician on the right must pay tribute to their myths, their status as pioneers. Danny Dayan is the Israeli Council General in New York. But before he came here, he was a settler himself in the West Bank. In fact, he was a leader of the settler movement. Back in the late 80s, Diane had given up a comfortable life in Tel Aviv, the center of modern secular Israel.

In Tel Aviv, we enjoyed the cultural scene in Tel Aviv, the shopping, the gastronomic scene in Tel Aviv. Your radio audience cannot see the effects it has in my book. body, but we thought that the right thing to do is to move to Samaria. And you say the right thing to do, politically. Politically, ideologically. Because Israelis in that area were suffering the terrorist attacks of the first intifada. The Palestinians were rejecting any reasonable solution to the conflict.

And we thought that we have to strengthen Israel's presence there. If you talk to Israelis and Palestinians, you quickly discover that both sides cleave to radically different narratives of history, both ancient and recent. The Israeli narrative is one of ancient possession of the land and the right to a homeland in a hostile world. The Palestinian narrative is one of colonial expulsion, displacement, and humiliation. For someone like Dayan, a settler, the reason for the ongoing conflict is absolutely clear and beyond question. Look, David, as long as the Palestinians do not recognize the right of Israel to exist, not just it's de facto existence, but the right of Israel of a Jewish state in that part of the world to exist, it's inevitable that they will try again and again. Because if you think it's the very existence of Israel is unjust, then of course you will do any effort to put it to an end. they have to recognize the right of Israel as a Jewish state to exist.

Only when that happens, there is a chance that day the peace process will start. Do you think the Obama administration and a lot of liberal Zionist Jews in the United States are naive about the state of affairs in Israel today? It seems to me that more and more people are saying there will be one state and one state only, that Oslo, that two states and all the rest is dead? When I reject the idea that the only option to two states is one state, I think that we have to be much more innovative. We need much more, I would say, out-of-the-box thinking. Maybe we will have to engage, I would say, in political architecture

and try to design a kind of, of political structure that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. That will be as peculiar a solution as this conflict is peculiar. But what you call peculiar seems to be a recipe for injustice. No, why? Why? No, I don't agree with that. Because if you're going to maintain a Jewish democratic state, it's going to be very hard for it to be Jewish considering demographic trends over the law. David, you are suggesting that the only option to the two states is one state.

But there are other options. We have to think, for instance, in terms of functional compromise instead of territorial compromise. What does that mean? I don't know exactly, but we have to stop. What we need desperately in this conflict is fresh thinking, is to put aside all the... But when I hear the fresh thinking from somebody like Neftali Bennett, who's to the right of Netanyahu, but an extremely powerful voice with a lot of support from the settlers,

which is the kind of victor's ethos in Israeli politics today. When I'm hearing is the voice of annexation, proper annexation. Well, now you are hearing me, and I think that, as I said, the solution to the conflict doesn't lie with needle at this stage,

in two states or one state. Isn't it clear that Prime Minister Netanyahu, who, despite some earlier statements, will refuse to negotiate the establishment of any Palestinian state, isn't it clear that he has no intention whatsoever of altering the status quo unless he decides, in the end, to make it even more draconian? His position is to this very day, his sincere, his genuine position is that if a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes this right of Israel to exist, and there are proper security arrangements that should be the way to solve the conflict. And let's say that did happen. Could you see a scenario in which the settlements, and there are a lot of them in the West Bank,

do you think those people would get up and leave or would it require an enormous violence and upheaval and police action to get them to come home? Well, if that happens, that's a very big if, as I said, they am very skeptical if that will have. happen because of the Palestinian positions, I think there is a third option. They can stay if they want as residents of the Palestinian state. Look, imagine David, if Nelson Mandela would have said, I want majority rule in South Africa and to expel of the white residents of South Africa. I want the South Africa without any white presence. I don't see any Mandela's around on the scene.

No, but in that case, that's exactly. what I am saying. On the Israeli side, included. I see many Mandela's in Israeli side. I don't see any Mandela's on the Palestinian side. Who are the Mandela's on the Israeli side? I don't know.

Can't tell me one? Mandela was a very special person. We are not doing in characterizing now Israeli leaders. But the equivalent here is that isn't this one of the problems? Wait, wait, wait. Isn't there a poverty of Israeli political leadership as much as there is anywhere else? What we need is a Mandela in the Palestinian side. We need a Mandela in the Palestinian side that will say, okay, we can't coexist with ethnic minority of Jews in the state of Palestine.

But they say exactly the contrary. And, you know, in the 21st century, if you see an aspiring state that says we cannot assimilate, as Israel does, for instance, an ethnic minority, then it's a big question if they are. mature enough to have sovereignty. You wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a couple of years ago, calling for peaceful non-reconciliation between Israel and the West Bank, what you called Judean Samaria. What is that? And was it ever implemented? What stopped it?

Back in 2014, I said that since reconciliation is not possible right now because of the Palestinian attitude towards the right of Israel to exist, then let's opt for the second best. And the second base is to do, to try to live as normally as possible under the abnormal conditions of non-reconciliation. And I called, for instance, for the rehabilitation of refugee camps without asking any strings attached, asking the Palestinians to renounce what they call the claim of return. or for instance, I will give you one example. Maybe it will explain it best. I don't understand why a Palestinian software engineer from Ramallah has to emigrate to Dubai to find a proper job when Tel Aviv or Jerusalem can offer lots of vacancies. That doesn't mean peace.

That means that we have to strive to live as normally as possible until peace arrives, because, as I said, I am quite pessimistic about the date of arrival of the final status agreement. Everywhere you look, pessimism and resignation. You go to the checkpoints and the territories and you see people subjected to daily humiliations. The barbed wire, the walls. The disconnection between Palestinian towns as if Gaza were 1,000 miles from Nablus and Janine on the West Bank. There's just no way of escaping the daily feeling of gloom. There's no doubt that the mood among the Palestinians is highly pessimistic.

I reach Khalil Shikaki in Ramallah on the West Bank by Skype. Shikaki runs the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, and that gives him a unique view of public opinion in the Palestinian territories and in Israel as well. Shikaki agrees with John Kerry. There's just been too many wrenches thrown into the machinery of the peace process at this point. The perception is that the Israelis, by building settlements, have made the two-state solution no longer viable, no longer practical, and that the Palestinians do not have the means to force the Israelis to do that. And that the international community either does not care or does not have the capacity to, or the willingness.

to pressure the Israelis. Having said that, I would still say that I don't think that we reached a point of no return. So you believe that despite the rhetoric, and let's stick to the Palestinian side for the moment, you believe that despite the rhetoric that we hear, whether it's on the street or in various political factions, that a two-state solution could not only happen that it could hold, that it could be secure. that it could be peaceful, even in that incredibly volatile neighborhood of the Middle East? I'll tell you something. Even in the midst of this pessimism that is currently prevailing,

when we ask Palestinians, what is your most fundamental goal? The Palestinian state is selected by almost half of all Palestinians immediately. So, in other words, when you ask people to think about their interests, The question of statehood comes up almost immediately. And the next thing that comes after it is way behind it. That's very clear that for most Palestinians, this notion of independence and sovereignty and self-determination is a deeply rooted interest that is very, very difficult for it to go away.

In other words, for all the rhetoric directed against Israel, for all the resentment, all the lost hope and rage, Shikaki thinks most Palestinians would still take a pragmatic choice of accepting Israel in order to gain their own statehood and security. What does your polling show that the Israelis and the Palestinians see as their options? Well, about half on both sides support a two-state solution, sometimes a little bit more here, a little bit there. About a third of the Palestinians support a one-state solution. And that means what to them? One-state solution means what?

Basically, equal political and civil rights in one state, two communities, but one single state. Jews of Palestine, of Israel, and Palestinians of Palestine, Israel, including Israeli Arabs, in other words, would all live in one single state. Basically, the South African model, the South African model. A post-apartheid South Africa. Absolutely. Yes indeed. Now, people who object to a one-state solution say, yeah, that's the solution sounds like Bosnia. In other words, it's a solution that will end up in inevitable conflict. Do you agree? I tend to agree with that, yes. I don't see the one-state solution as viable.

I think a lot of Palestinians turn to that out of the conviction that the two-state solution is no longer viable. and that the future is a one-state reality, and that this one-state reality, whether we like it or not, is here to stay because Israel is becoming more right-wing and will not agree to grant Palestinians' freedom and independence and so on. And that, therefore, all we have to do is just wait five, ten more years, and the reality on the ground will be visible to everyone to see. the whole international community and the Israelis themselves will see that what they have created is a system of apartheid throughout the West Bank and that this system is not tenable. Now, this is a little complicated.

What he's saying is that a lot of Palestinians think things might well get worse before they get better. In this way of thinking, annexation by Israel would put them under a system of unambiguous apartheid. And that would be so bad that Israel, like South Africa, would over time and under great international pressure feel isolated and finally yield to a more just form of government for both peoples. You wrote a study called sliding toward a one-state reality.

Isn't the one-state reality already in place? We are sliding in that direction, and yes, there are elements of that reality on the ground, but I think the point about this one-state reality is when do you reach a point of no return. I do not believe we have reached the point of no return. And I think we still have time to put this two-state solution together. Marav, is the two-state solution absolutely dead in your mind? Oh, no. Oh, so no. Back to Marav McAley, the former journalist and member of the parliament in the center-left Labor Party.

The Labor Party is not given up on the two-state solution, although, to be honest, most members are just not talking. much about it at all. The two-state solution is so possible. And there's so many partners who can make it possible. Yes, it's going to be much more complicated than it was 10 and 20 and 30 and of course 50 years ago, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. The forces who are against the two-state solution are much louder. and much more powerful these days, but there is still a huge part of both Israeli public

and Palestinian public who believes that this is the solution. And still to this day, if you count fingers in Israeli parliament, there still is a majority for an agreement within the parliament. Once we have, in the chair of the prime minister in Israel, political will to act out the two-state solution to make it happen, it can be done. Now, you say that a majority on both sides, a slight majority on both sides is still for a two-state solution, but you know at the same time those same polls say... It's not even so slight, that's what I'd say.

It's not even so slight. But the same polls will say an even bigger majority on both sides say that we don't have a partner for peace and that the conditions are not ripe and that neither side trusts the other. You know, we've run around this maple for years and years, but that faith seems to be disintegrating all the time. I couldn't agree more, and I think the people who feel that and think that

are right to feel that and to think that because this would be their experience. I mean, if you think of the population on both sides, I think there are many more people who were born, only into a reality of failures in that sense. Different kinds of peace processes and roads of maps who have constantly and repeatedly failed. So, of course, they should feel like that.

But that doesn't mean that you can't change the way they feel and you can't change the way they think. Now, the leadership that's pro-2-state solution seems, at least from a distance, awfully weak. We're talking about a labor party, the inheritance of the labor party led by Isaac Herzog, who does not seem like a powerful presence on the Israeli political scene. Am I wrong? Unfortunately, you're not very wrong.

It's true. It's not only about the personalities. It's also about the narrative. Our narrative that was the two-state solution with a partner, with really good prospects for peace and security, security and peace is lost a lot because some of our center-left leaders have come and said there is no partner. Once they have said it, we lost our narrative and it's very, very difficult for us to gain our own confidence in this. But the truth of the matter, as a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and the subcommittees,

I can tell you that it still is possible, that it's totally possible and achievable. if only we have the political will for it. A final question, and it's this, and it's blunt, and I think I know where you'll go with this, but has liberal Zionism died and has religious nationalism won in Israel? Well, that's very funny that you should ask this. The short answer is no, not at all, but it's a cultural thing. We think of everything as if it was a Hollywood feature, as if it ends, you know, and after an hour and a half, well, this is not how life is. After the end of the feature, life continues.

So even if this act, they have their hand up, you know, and they are winning in this act, it doesn't mean that they're going to win after the subtitles go up. I think Morav McAiley is right. History doesn't end. It doesn't lock into place. Things can shift in the most unlikely ways. Look at our own country. For the moment, at least, all the major factors, the dominance of the right in Israel and the United States,

the chaos of Palestinian politics, the ominous state of the larger Middle East, all of that makes it harder to be an optimist with every passing day. There's no point now being nostalgic for the peace process as it was in the 90s. This is a conflict that's been going on for fully, a century, and it's not going to end anytime soon. But with the future of so many people at stake, Israelis, as well as Palestinians, not to mention the ramifications for the United States,

the region, and the world. Despair shouldn't be an option for any of us. I'm David Remnick. Still ahead today, a new look at the life of the great poet Elizabeth Bishop and a new album from the rap duo Run the Jewels. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. This is the New Yorker The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick. One of the records music fans are buzzing about right now is from the rap duo, Run the Jules. Over the holidays, they released their third album with the title, Run the Jules 3, which is nice and straightforward. Hwa Shoo, who writes about music for the New Yorker, ends a particular expert in hip-hop, has been following these artists for quite some time.

It's two guys. Killer Mike, who was associated with the hit group Outcast, an LP, who was a hero in the underground indie rap world. what people sometimes call backpack wrap. I was one of these people who grew up listening to LP when he was in company Flow. And in the mid-90s, they were so kind of raw and boisterous and cacophonous. I just didn't really see his aesthetic fitting with Mike, who sounded really good alongside Outcast. There was something really kind of funky and soulful about his best tracks.

And I just didn't really think that they would sound that good together, but I think that they're Friendship provides this chemistry that makes the group pretty good. What brought these two guys together, really? They started rapping and they were no buddies and they're insiders and outsiders at the same time. What kind of brought them into the same room musically? They came together because an executive from the Cartoon Network thought that they would sound good with one another. And he had commissioned both of them to do tracks for an adult swim single series. And they met and, you know, weirdly enough, they hit it off.

you know, they're both 41. They've been in the world of hip hop since their teens. It was sort of odd for them to encounter one another and befriend one another in their late 30s. You know, they had such radically different backgrounds. They came from different kind of worlds within hip hop. Mike is black. He grew up in working class Atlanta. LP is white. He grew up in a decent part of Brooklyn. But somehow in around 2011, 2012, they were both a little despondent, a bit bitter. about where their careers were, and they came together, and the results have been pretty startling. One of my favorite tracks off the new album is the first track down, where Mike and L.P. sort of talk about what it's like to look back upon sort of all the time that they've survived. I hope with the highest of hopes that I never have to go back to the trap, and my days are dealing with dope. So I, I only spit fire in dope, so later on you can go quote, my lines to your people and folk. And they say, dang. That boy be sitting that pressure

And he be smoking that pressure And he's smart as a professor Yes, sir 25 lighters on dresser Pound of that pressure Sitting right next to a book and a gun Pallor the bullet you better use one time For the freedom of speech

Two time for the right the whole heat Just give to the fifth At the cops in the house Close your mouth and pray to your cheese Ask why because the devil a lie So I say holy and high May never get rich but I never bitch Because I made it here by and bye

My y'all I could have dodge y'all A couple times I took my eyes Yeah, that was down. And I think rappers are particularly good at retrospection and sort of narrating, sort of self-mythologizing. And I think that track does a really good job where Mike's sort of looking back at all that he's endured and sort of marveling at the fact that he's still here and he's still standing. And that he's found not only a rich collaborator, but a best friend. So they became critics, darlings after a while, I run the jewels.

What did they give you that you weren't getting from other music? You know, a lot of what's driving hip-hop right now, like young people, the internet, sort of reinventing the form, kind of breaking the form apart. The really interesting part about them coming together is, I think it conveys some of the difficulty of being middle-aged and rapping. Believe me, I get the ailments and problems of middle-aged. But for rappers in particular, what sets in that's a problem?

What's the sort of innate difficulty of being middle-aged as a rapper? I think hip-hop is, it's a young person's game. Even if you're older, I mean in hip-hop age older, it's difficult to kind of stay relevant. And so they've had to find new audiences. In terms of subject in terms of language. Yeah, subject, language, sort of the sonic characteristic. You know, back in the day, they could really kind of revel in being these. rebellious outsiders. I think now in the age of kind of labels not being what they once were,

you really have to market yourself differently. So they publicize their albums through BuzzFeed. They've toured with a lot of rock bands. When they surprise leaked the album over the winter break, they actually filmed a short Portlandia skit with Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. And I should note that Killer Mike is by far the funniest person in the skit. All right, guys, we are so excited to talk strategy for the new album. We're really excited to hear what you have to say. First of all, do you know what an album drop is? Yeah, when you drop an album and with no lead time and no press

and you just kind of give it to everybody. By surprise, boom. But even that, it's tame now. Yeah. That's too slow. So, one thing you could do is you could fake your death. Do you ever think about doing that? I have.

Look, you make an announcement, I'm dead. I'm really sorry, I've gone. But if you're dead, how do you announce it? Such a good question. So if LP is the one that doctor, then you're the one that announces it. All the fans show up to the funeral, right? Look, what a sad day.

What, it's moving. Call the police, no, don't, stop. He's alive. And he's got the album. His death was the new record. I think we could sell more records if we left L.P. dead. But he's my friend and I don't want him dead.

He's not dead. Okay. I'm not going to work. Now, do you remember that? Love that. Now, these guys, their music is a lot more political than the mainstream of hip-hop these days, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I think all music is innately political, but I think, you know, Killer Mike spent a lot of last year stumping for Bernie Sanders. And he was early on that campaign.

He was. And I actually, weirdly enough, was one of the first people to interview Killer Mike in the early 2000s when he was one of Outcast Proteges. And even at that time, I knew that he was a lot more than the image he conveyed. You know, he wrapped about dealing drugs, about sort of being in the streets, but, you know, I knew that he was really into reading. He was really into philosophy, he's really into sociology. He really had this political intellect that I think a lot of people are now recognizing is really thoughtful and fleshed out. And I think this really comes across on the last track on the album, a report that shareholders kill your masters, which, you know, reflects on their encounters or how unlikely their friendship is, but also kind of looks forward. today when they can kill their masters. Well, you said that all music is political to some degree, but not all albums or protest albums. And I think this one is, isn't it? I think it is.

It may not have been recorded that way since I don't think that they were foreseeing the election of Donald Trump, per se. But I do think there's something really powerful about just the unlikeliness of their story, their friendship. It's not the answer, but it's a start. That's music from run. That's music from Run the Jewels, the duo of Killer Mike and L.P. And I talk with the New Yorker's Hwa Shoe. And now, a little unwanted chit-chat by the water cooler. Hey, Gary.

How's going? Hey. Good weekend? Yeah, your back seems a little. You seem a little folded up there. Are you okay? A little sweat on the brow. Is that some back pain going on?

I'm here to tell you, sitting all day is killing you. All right, Garabar, that's why I switched to a standing desk. And if you know it's good for you, you will too. Okay. According to an important WebMD article that my friend Tony described to me, every minute you spend sitting shaves years off your life. Yeah, indeed. Sitting has been called the new smoking.

The only difference is that smoking looks cool and is a great way to meet people. and isn't actually that bad for you. I smoke. Sitting, on the other hand, looks ridiculous and shameful. Like you're afraid to admit how tall you are and is terrible for you. The human body simply wasn't meant to be folded up for long stretches like a sad pretzel. It was meant to be held ramrod straight like a noble pretzel stick. Fact. The average person sits for more than 19 hours a day.

I'm not sure. Fact. Sitting for long stretches interferes with your body's production of an enzyme called LPL, which you need or something. Fact. even regular exercise isn't enough to counteract the damage from all this sitting, meaning that regular exercise is stupid and pointless. I don't exercise. Oh, you should definitely...

I was once a standing desk skeptic, too, but after I made the switch, four days ago, I could immediately sense a difference in how I felt. Way more self-righteous. I used to get home from work totally exhausted. Now I'm brimming with energy. Instead of collapsing onto the couch, I paced my apartment all night long in ever-tightening circles.

I simply cannot sleep, that there are so many people out there at their desks sitting. Ah. I just got to... I know what you're thinking. Won't I look strange if I'm the only one in my office standing up to work? Well, not as strange as you're going to look when you keel over dead at your computer from a lethal combination of sciatica and weak calves.

Until somebody describes a WebMD article that changes my mind, I will use a standing desk. In a few months, I might even switch to a treadmill desk. Which is a great way to prepare for a swimming desk. By this time next year, I will be dangling from a ceiling-mounted rock climbing desk my body swollen from all the extra LPL I'm producing. Unfortunately, by this time next year, unless you make the switch from sitting to standing, you will almost certainly be dead. Just FYI. All right, later, gear. Hey, Susan, you got to check out this standing desk.

All right, I'll wait until you get off the phone. I can wait. I can stand all day. I switched to a standing desk, so now you should too. That's a piece by Tom O'Donnell performed for the New Yorker Radio Hour by Dylan Dawson. In a minute, a new look at the life of the poet Elizabeth Bishop, whose late, secret love affair inspired one of her most famous poems. That's coming up on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Next week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, we'll talk football with a father and a son who were both very deep into the sport. Dad was a linebacker in the NFL, and his son plays for a top-notch high school team in Florida. They're both passionate about the sport, but struggling with everything we know now about head injuries and brain damage. I'll also talk with a tool Gawande

about health care in America if, or maybe it's a matter of when Obamacare is repealed. That's all coming next week. This is a Nova Scotian poem about the east coast of Nova Scotia. At the fish houses. Although it's a cold evening,

Down by one of the fish houses, an old man sits netting. His net in the gloaming almost invisible, a dark, purple, brown, and his shuttle worn and polish. The air smells so strong of codfish it makes one's nose run and one's eyes watered. Elizabeth Bishop published just 101 poems in her entire lifetime. She was not especially prolific,

and that economy is part of what made her tick. she's famous for her precision, but also her reserve. Right when confessional poetry came into fashion, with Robert Lowell writing about his family and his marriages, or later on Sylvia Plath writing about her father, Elizabeth Bishop kept her personal life out of her writing almost completely, or so it seemed. There's a new biography of Bishop by Megan Marshall,

who's discovered a big trove of the poet's unpublished letters, and they suggest that Bishop's poems were maybe a little bit more revealing than they seemed at first, at least in the personal sense. Marshall sat down with New Yorker.com literary editor, David Hagland. Megan, I wanted to start with a line in your book. You tell us, I had not been close to Elizabeth Bishop. Indeed, I had reason to think she might dislike me. And it's a very striking line to encounter at the beginning of a biography.

And I thought maybe you could just describe how you encountered Bishop and why you had that impression. Well, you're cutting to the chase here. You know, I've often thought that my interest in biography and writing biography began in those years when I was a student poet at Harvard and studying with Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. I was in their class. I was near them, but still at a distance, kind of a biographer's distance. And I hadn't really thought about writing about Elizabeth Bishop, as you noted there.

We hadn't particularly gotten along. I think what I really wanted to say was Elizabeth Bishop was a fascinating personality. She was not a warm presence in the classroom. She began by telling us she didn't believe poetry could be taught. And that was off-putting, but I was one of 11 students who hung on and took the course with her. And I was still part of the group by the end of the semester, and we were all invited to her condominium. on Lewis Wharf for a party where she suddenly was a much warmer person.

And I could really see who she was beyond this sort of, you know, shy, almost cold person. She had just published Geography 3, her last book in which her best-known poem, One Art, appeared. And we were very lucky that one of her poet friends there pressed her to. read that poem, and it's a moment that I'll never forget. Well, the poem's short enough. I wonder if we should go ahead and read it. Do you have it in front of you?

Let me get hold of it. Okay, one art. The art of losing isn't hard to master. So many things seemed filled with the intent to be lost, that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day, except the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster. Places and names and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch, and look, my last or next to last of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones, and vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. Even losing you, the joking voice, a gesture I love, I shan't have lied, it's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master,

though it may look like, write it like disaster. It really is such a perfect poem. One thing that is striking about the biography is really coming to understand more of the story behind it, which I really didn't. And even though I had read the poem many times, you know, in a funny way, I mean, she makes the experience of, you know, that she's describing the experience of losing, of losing small things, of losing big things, of losing. people and places, it feels universal. And in that way, you're not really pushed necessarily to think about, well, what is she describing from her own life? Yeah. And in fact, most people have read it as an elegy to Lada de Miserieu Swars, her lover and partner in Brazil, who died tragically after their 15-year relationship was coming to an end, probable suicide. So,

So it seemed obvious to people that this, even losing you, that great line at the end was referring to Lada. But in fact, it was very much about Alice Methfessel, her beloved partner of later years, and her fear, which had been there all along. Alice was much younger. Elizabeth's health was perhaps challenged, even when they met when she was in her early 60s, you know, a sense that she would one day lose. her. She said that it was pure emotion, and I think that was not typical of her poems. Well, and that connection between the poem and her relationship with Alice wouldn't really be clear to us except for the letters that you came upon before writing the book, these letters between Elizabeth and Alice that people hadn't seen before. Yeah, I had thought there need be

no new biography written of Elizabeth Bishop until I learned that There was a whole trove of letters that Alice, Methfessel, who had been Elizabeth's heir and executor, she had held back a number of really key correspondences when she sold letters to Vassar College. Alice had held on to her own correspondence with Elizabeth, which people didn't know existed, also to last letters that Lauda had written in the last months of her life. and a number of very intense confessional letters she'd written to her psychoanalyst in the 1940s. So these really opened the life up, and it was in the letters to Alice that I began to see how clearly this poem was about a time when Alice, after four years or so, of the relationship with Elizabeth, Elizabeth had a problem with drinking, and this was getting to be too much. for Alice who decided, it seemed, for a short while, that she would marry a man leaving Elizabeth.

And that was what provoked 17 drafts of a poem that became one art. And the letters are very moving. You know, one of the larger questions that I think the biography raises is Bishop has this, you know, long-standing reputation as a very private and guarded person. and as a reader of hers, you inevitably wrestle with the question of, to what extent that was simply her temperament or disposition or something that she chose, and to what extent it was in some sense forced upon her because she couldn't be open? Well, I'll have to tell you when I started reading these letters and the archive at Vassar, particularly the ones she'd written to her psychoanalysts, which were very revealing about her. early relationships with women as a girl. I started to cry. I thought, you know, this can't, this can't go out there. The woman that I knew would be appalled. But then I thought, well,

you know, do we feel that way about male poets? Do we not write about Yates and his, you know, proclivities? I mean, why protect Elizabeth Bishop? And in protecting her, what would be gained? I think, in fact, one of the reasons her reputation is so high is that people have come to know Elizabeth through her letters. Why skip these letters? In fact, I think they're all the more important to really understand a woman what she was, you know, in a way, concealing, but also revealing in these poems. I mean, I've always loved her poem, The Shampoo, which was, I guess, a little bit too graphic in the 1950s, even though it's hard to tell that it's a love poem. But it was one of the few poems after the point at which she had a first read contract at the New Yorker that was

turned away by the New Yorker. And I think because you just couldn't help yourself from realizing this was a woman writing about wanting to shampoo the hair of her, probably her lover. It's a love poem. And I don't know if you'd like to tell you. Yeah, let's read that one. It's really beautiful. Yeah, I'm going to find it in my book. And I think you hear in it these rhythms of Brazil that she has come to love along with her lover Lada, the shampoo. The still explosions on the rocks, the lichens,

grow by spreading gray concentric shocks. They have arranged to meet the rings around the moon, although within our memories they have not changed. and since the heavens will attend as long on us, you've been, dear friend, precipitate and pragmatical. And look what happens, for time is nothing, if not amenable. The shooting stars in your black hair in bright formation are flocking where, so straight, so soon?

Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin, battered and shiny like the moon. What a wonderful way of describing the moon. You think even aside from this scene of Elizabeth and Lada were living in the house that Lada had designed and was constructing on this kind of remote hillside, mountainside in Brazil. And they really, they truly did have, you know, a marriage more than the later relationship with Alice, which had to be sort of covert. This was, they were open in this relationship and, and maybe be. because it was mostly lived up in the whole side, and they could be select about who would come and visit them.

But this poem was too much for Catherine White at The New Yorker, and also too much for the editor of Poetry Magazine, and only several years later found publication in the New Republic. Well, in some ways, that's the other aspect of Bishop's reputation that, for me, the reading the biography really challenged, which is that, you know, we think of her as very guarded in her, work as well, but so much does come through. And, you know, reading the book, I started to feel like Bishop experienced an unusual amount of tragedy in her life. Her father died when she was just

eight months old, and her mother suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized when Bishop was still quite young. And then there were people throughout her life who died tragically. I don't know if that's just the effect of, you know, seeing someone's whole life. And between two covers, but it started to feel as though she experienced an unusual amount of sadness. Yeah, I think you're right. And she, for the most part, handled it bravely and gracefully, I think we'd say, and that for her, the writing of these poems was, they were kind of like a life raft that she could float on and sometimes float away. But it's clear that at an early age, art became the saving grace for, Elizabeth, it was art, it was the poetry that allowed her to survive and that she's left us

such a great gift. Before we go, I thought we could listen to a little bit more of Bishop's poetry. We have a recording of Bishop herself reading the poem at the fish houses, and it's a long poem, but I thought we could listen to her reading the last section. Down at the water's edge, at the place where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp descending into the water, thin, silver tree trunks are laid horizontally across the gray stones

down and down at intervals of four or five feet. Cold, dark, deep, and absolutely clear, element bearable to no mortal, to fish and to seals. One seal, particularly, I've seen here evening after evening.

He was curious about me. He was interested in music. Like me, a believer in total immersion. So I used to sing in Baptist hymns. I also sang a mighty fortress is our God. He stood up in the water and regarded me steadily, moving his head a little.

Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerged almost in the same spot with a sort of shrug as if it were against his better judgment. Cold, dark, deep, and absolutely clear, the clear, gray, icy water. back behind us the dignified tall firs begin bluish associating with their shadows a million christmas trees stand waiting for christmas the water seems suspended above the rounded gray and blue gray stones i've seen it over and over the same sea the same slightly indifferently swinging above the stones iceily free above the stones above the stones and then the world

if you should dip your hand in your wrist would ache immediately your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn as if the water were a transmutation of fire that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame if you tasted it it would first taste bitter then briny then surely burn your tongue It is like what we imagine knowledge to be, dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free, drawn from the cold, hard mouth of the world, derived from the rocky breasts forever,

flowing and drawn, and since our knowledge is historical, flowing and flown. God, that knocks me out. Elizabeth Bishop reading at the fish houses. The New Yorkers David Haglin spoke with Megan Marshall, author of the new book Elizabeth Bishop, A Miracle for Breakfast. Thanks for being part of The New Yorker Radio Hour. If you missed anything today,

you can hear the whole show and, in fact, everything we've ever done at New YorkerRadio.org. I'm David Remnick, and have a great week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garber of tune yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riann and Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield,

Mithelie Rowe, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen, Becky Cooper, and Johnny Vince Evans. Elizabeth Bishop's poems are used with permission from Ferrar Strauss and Giroux and help from the Library of Congress's Recorded Sound Research Center. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported. supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.