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Poetry

The Poems (We Think) We Know: “The Night Before Christmas”
More than a feel-good fantasy of holiday giving...
Alexandra SocaridesDec 24, 2013
- Poetry
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry by Larry Levis and Anna Journey
THE DEATH OF SEAMUS HEANEY this past August reminds us that the passing of any great poet, however old, always feels untimely. A refrain in the flood of reminiscences, tributes, and testimonies that followed the news of the Irish Nobel-prize-winner’s ...
Lisa Russ SpaarDec 6, 2013
- Poetry
The Poems (We Think) We Know: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes
On 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' by Langston Hughes...
Alexandra SocaridesAug 1, 2013
- Poetry
Pop Disappears
THERE ARE TWO KINDS of things, wrote J.L. Austin in an essay that Arthur Danto made famous: things that are part of the world, and things that are used to refer to part of the world. The things that are ...
Michael W. CluneJul 29, 2013
- Fiction
- Poetry
“A Ravishing Mind”: On the Pleasures of Linda Gregerson’s Poems
IT SEEMS RIGHT that the titles of Linda Gregerson’s last three books, combined, take up just five words. Gregerson loves the pun-ish potential of language, the way the entangled accidents of time, circumstance, want, and will make meaning possible, and ...
Jonathan FarmerMar 4, 2013
- Poetry
The Gaza Poetry Roundtable: Part III
Palestinian and Israeli Poets in Conversation...
Dara Barnat, Fady Joudah, Marcela Sulak, Tala Abu RahmehDec 2, 2012
Second Acts: A Second Look at Second Books of Poetry: Webster and Hull
The anatomy of a second book of poems...
Lisa Russ SpaarNov 10, 2012
- Poetry
The English Iliad
On three English translations of 'The Iliad'...
John FarrellOct 30, 2012
- History
- Poetry
Juan Felipe Herrera on Being Poet Laureate
Juan Felipe Herrera talks about becoming the new California Poet Laureate. ...
Tom LutzJun 17, 2012
- Poetry
Dissent: Liu Xiabo's "No Enemies, No Hatred"
In the forefront of calls for democracy in China, Liu has engaged in various forms of dissent....
Gordon FellmanMar 9, 2012
Bodies in Pain
The poems suspend different voices, different recognizable patterns of emotion and idiom, and stretch the lines out to include every voice....
Adam PlunkettFeb 22, 2012
- Poetry
A Catalogue of Us with All: Juliana Spahr’s “Well Then There Now”
where do 'we' go from here? How do we build, assume, curate a new 'us'?...
Siobhan PhillipsFeb 22, 2012
- Poetry
Find Yourself A City To Live In
YOU WAKE UP IN A NEW CITY, but you don't know which one it is. Before the rational part of your mind kicks in, while the traffic blurs past, your memory shuffles for possible answers. New York? Your cousin's house in ...
Peter CampionJan 19, 2012
- Poetry
The Scholar’s Art: On Susan Stewart
GIVEN THE MANY USES and abuses of the word "freedom," it stands to reason that our poetic history has produced a little epitome of its vexations. The concept of a "free" poetry is all but an oxymoron: Poetry is concerned, above ...
Ange MlinkoJan 19, 2012
- Nonfiction
- Poetry
The Cows: A Rumination
The Cows seems particularly playful, gentle. Her consciousness here bristles, stirs, even strains, but it rarely furrows or breaks....
Matthew SpecktorNov 8, 2011
- Fiction
- Poetry
Weaving Spiders Come Not Here
California has always been a home for poets; it’s also always been mostly a poem itself....
Ed SkoogOct 13, 2011
- Poetry
Information Technology
CHINESE NOTEBOOK is a runic book. The poems are like lost clues scribbled in the margin of some other, longer, duller book; they're not pieces of narrative but puzzling, evocative inscriptions. These are poems for those who don't need to be ...
Stan AppsAug 25, 2011
- Poetry
Glimmers of Family: Harmony Holiday's "Negro League Baseball"
Negro League Baseball may be tough going for the average reader, yet its rewards are bountiful....
Sean SingerJun 30, 2011
- Poetry
Scrappiness
Poets who don’t want their unpublished poems to see the light of day should — as Auden did -- take to burning them....
Eric GudasJun 30, 2011
- Poetry
Astounding Cosmic News: Matthew Zapruder's "Come On All You Ghosts"
MATTHEW ZAPRUDER WILL SPEAK TO YOU. This isn’t a metaphor, or a mere recommendation: it’s a description of method. In “Come On All You Ghosts,” the title poem of his third and latest volume, Zapruder calls directly to whomever ...
Siobhan PhillipsJun 9, 2011
- Poetry
Stars Inside Your Thumb
A real-life horror lies at the heart of Hicok's book....
Charles Harper WebbJun 9, 2011
- Poetry
We Revolt Ourselves
TIMOTHY DONNELLY'S SECOND BOOK of poetry arrives with considerable fanfare. The Cloud Corporation is a scary bedtime book, one that sometimes slips into a gothic mood, sometimes rehearses an idyll, and sometimes toys with the apocalypse. It's not above a little ...
Daniel TiffanyApr 26, 2011
- Poetry