It Made Me Feel Like More Than One Person
You can learn how to read a poem, but you can’t choose how it will affect you. Here, a little cough launches a journey through a reader’s mind.
Poetry
A collection of 48 issues
Alternate Forms for Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18
The Bard’s most famous sonnet very nearly wasn’t a Shakespearean sonnet. Rejected pairings of content and form, from rondelet to an acrostic hiding his name.
Crime Reported
Lawbreaking occurs, a man calls for help, the police detain an endless lineup of men. Sometimes fraud comes as no surprise.
Demolish Me
The present-day lust for ruins is nothing new. In fact, it’s nearly as old as any ruins themselves. From a flattened Louvre to Percy Bysshe Shelley, a journey to the dawn of ruin porn.
The Works and Days of Elena Shvarts
A literary gumshoe visits St. Petersburg to track down the so-called “ninja of Russian verse,” Elena Shvarts, who died in 2010 leaving almost nothing behind.
Pope Fabulous
Pope Francis's recent remark that he would not judge gay priests was a revolutionary moment for the church—a moment, in fact, worth twerking into verse.
Everyone Popes
Former Pope Benedict XVI has left the Vatican, returning to his former life. But even with the church's retirement package, how can private citizenship compare? A poem for Mr. Ratzinger.
I Am Paul, Paul I Am
Preparing for Thursday’s vice presidential showdown, Republican candidate Paul Ryan consults Theodor Seuss Geisel to simplify his message so that even a child—or American voter—can understand.
The City Is Wilder and Kinder Than You Think
Situationist invades Hoxton... Street poems arouse Londoners... Public discourse colored by disfigured Futura... Robert Montgomery’s street poems have something to say to you.
Poetry for the Age of American Decline
Poetry can provide solace. It can also remind people to quit freaking out. Poems selected for Congress, nervous shoppers, Maureen Dowd, and the President of the United States.
Sugar Cube
There is a big difference between looking for something and simply looking, though travel can suit both pursuits.
Beware of False Friends
A new poem about lies and truth, and the fact that George Washington’s transplanted teeth were not made of wood, but probably came from his slaves.
Travels With Nathan
To our knowledge, Ezra Pound never saw a donkey show. Here's updated cantos for drunk backpackers in Madrid and jerks on the Dead Sea.
All This Debris Is Starting to Clog the System
A poem for when missing someone makes the soles of your feet hurt.
Humility & Co.
A new poem about the things families say and do during the holidays—when some words mean nothing, and some wreck meals.
Mikvah
A new poem, part confession, part song, about immersion and seafood soup.
The Karma Bum
When Allen Ginsberg stayed with my family, we played video games and read together. But the harmony was broken when the yoga began. It wouldn't be the last time.
Poem for Starlings
A reminder of why banks are terrible places to practice your stand-up comedy routine.
Spanking the Arils From a Pomegranate
Aril: “an extra seed-covering, typically colored and hairy or fleshy, e.g., the red fleshy cup around a yew seed.”
Slider
A new poem in which Descartes is proven wrong, and T. Rex’s Marc Bolan appears in a dream and starts thieving.
Ah, Poor Brother
Canadian-born poet, MacArthur “Genius” Award-winner, and scholar Anne Carson—of whom Susan Sontag decreed, “She is one of the few writers writing in English that I would read anything she wrote”—offers her first book of poetry since Decreation (2006), Nox (New Directions). Though to call Nox a book is
Having Fun With Words
North Carolina-born poet Tony Hoagland (What Narcissism Means to Me), who is well-regarded and lauded in the poetry world (which is hardly ever confused as the real world), might have titled his new long-awaited collection (Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Graywolf Press) something along the lines of Poets
Inseminating the Elephant
May is National Older Americans Month, Get Caught Reading Month, Meditation Month, Clean Air Month, Haitian Heritage Month, and a host of others—in honor of which I want to continue noting and advocating poetry. In this instance, Lucia Perillo, whose Inseminating the Elephant (Copper Canyon Press) was a finalist
Feeding the World
I suspect there are not many collections (if any) like The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris of Words Without Borders). Gathered within its pages are some of the finest poems from around the planet written in the 20th century. And it claims to
Kentucky Derby
A new poem about jockeys, ponies, and golden eggs filled with candy, and how quickly races are won when you’re drinking.
The Postman Rings Twice
Perhaps it is inevitable that a giant like the Nobel laureate and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda suffers posthumous paper cuts at the hands of academic scolds such as Ilan Stavans (who mocks and scorns the poet as a Stalinist stooge). Happily, we have also been graced with the posthumous publication
Russian Haiku
Not to worry, I am not going to go crazy on this poetry thing (I don’t think). But I couldn’t get past Russian-born Vera Pavlova’s slender volume, If There Is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems (Knopf; reportedly her first full-length volume in English), translated from the
National Welding Month
The fact that April is designated National Poetry Month (by what governing body escapes me, though I would not be surprised to learn that the pack of scoundrels in our Congress had lent their sketchy imprimatur to it) might have some meaning if it were not competing with National Stress
Platelet Count Descending
A new poem by the author of “Chronic,” in which “Lady Sings the Blues” is intoned, sung, spoken, and hollered.
Leveling Up
An invokation of Super Mario Brothers, Buddhists, and the customers at your local Starbucks.
Remembering the Dead
North African expatriate writer Tahar Ben Jelloun (The Blinding Absence of Light) is well-regarded in his adopted home of France (awarded a Prix Goncourt in 1987) and around the world, having garnered an International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004 (one impressive aspect of this award is that the long
Come Fly With Them
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has collaborated with ornithological illustrator par excellence David Allen Sibley to create a sweet little compendium, Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds (Columbia University Press), which is, as the title claims, over a hundred poems illustrated with 60 Sibley’s
Poem Written on the First Anniversary of My Father’s Death
A new poem by the author of “Green Squall” and winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award.
Grace and Ease
Of the incontestable reasons to choose one book, one song, one painting over another is the caprice of personal preference. There being many worthy poets available to the loquacious commentator, in the case of Marie Ponsot—who has over half a century of versifying under her belt—it was the
John Ashbery Turns 25
John Ashbery is not one of my favorite poets, but his longevity and prodigious accomplishments put him in that newly minted category of the “too big to fail.” Having won countless major awards (Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Yale Younger Poets Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award, etc.
A Relentless Pursuit of Beauty
If you can set aside (any) concerns about poetry in translation then you may rejoice at the publication of The Poetry of Rilke (FSG) edited by Edward Snow, a highly regarded contemporary translator of Rilke. This volume contains over 250 of the influential German poet’s work including complete translations
Closer to Paradise
Octogenerian Phillip Levine, who was born in Detroit of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents and worked in the mind-wrenching, body-breaking auto plants before he took up his poetic calling, has won two National Book Awards and a Pulitzer Prize. His seventeenth and newest collection of poetry, News of The World (Knopf), with
Goodbye to All Them
The life of a poet in New York means recognizing the important appellations and knowing when to take the (grant) money and run.
Bright Inaugural Day, Washington
The U.S. presidential inauguration in January will be one for the ages. A hat tip to Langston Hughes.
The Well-Known Citizen
In spite of all the reporters crawling around Alaska, Gov. Palin remains unknown to the general public. Thanks to W.H. Auden.
The Republican Speaks of Jungles
The presidential election continues to bring forth policy promises and attempts at soul-bearing honesty.
Do Not Go Gentle
With primary season nearly over, the two remaining Democrats are each facing their own demons. Perhaps some poetry will be an inspiration?
We Not Cruel
Delegates, primaries, ads, and speeches, mean the campaign season is full of chaos and noise. Putting things in order—in iambic tetrameter, that is.
Coiffed Beast Saunters
Soaring rhetoric is getting the short straw this campaign season, so how about some pointed poesy?
The Vote Not Shaken
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we help a reader choose between political candidates by applying modern poetry to the process.
The Obit Laureate
The first installment of our occasional series in which we transform recent Times obituaries--a gong striker, a burger matriarch, a bagpipe virtuoso--into light verse.
The Closest Jay Comes to a Love Song
At the rager the chicks come and go, talking about art or something. In time for a hundred hip-hop-hoorays, a frat-boy adapation of T.S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Poetry for Your Girlfriend
Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week we play the eloquent Cyrano to an anonymous Christian, and script poesy for the tongue-tied.