Poets.org

Inside Bright Star

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:18:00 EST

Read about Jane Campion's film Bright Star, chronicling the love affair between John Keat and his neighbor Fanny Brawne, as well as the poems and love letters featured in the biopic.

Spotlight Poet: Denise Duhamel

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

The author of numerous books and chapbooks or poetry, Duhamel writes poems that communicate "the ache of human existence."

Paul Lawrence Dunbar: In Summer

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

Oh, summer has clothed the earth / In a cloak from the loom of the sun! / And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue...

Poems about Aliens

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

While it is seems even literary science fiction pieces are rarely categorized as literature, many serious poets have written poems on the topic of life beyond our world.

Poems of the American Revolution

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

The American Revolution inspired a vast body of literature, much of which attempts to allegorize the fledgling nation's birth and cast its genesis in the language of archetypal struggles and timeless human themes.

Spotlight Poet: Susan Wheeler

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

The author of several books of poetry and a novel, Wheeler writes poems that speak in the "the jangling discourse of our nation."

Poems for Summer

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:03:00 EST

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimmed; / And every fair from fair sometime declines, / By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed...

Poetry Resources For Teens

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

Join the Poets.org Street Team, Create and publish notebooks of your favorite poems, browse writing exercises, join a discussion forum, and more!

Poetry Resources For Teens

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

Join the Poets.org Street Team, Create and publish notebooks of your favorite poems, browse writing exercises, join a discussion forum, and more!

Poems about Fathers

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

"It doesn't matter who my father was," Anne Sexton once wrote, "it matters who I remember he was." That memory--of the enormous, perhaps protective, perhaps absent, often mythic man--looms large in poems about fathers.

Jane Taylor: The Violet

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

Down in a green and shady bed / A modest violet grew; / Its stalk was bent, it hung its head, / As if to hide from view.

Spotlight Audio: Abraham Smith reads "we both split"

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

like summer melon / hit by a part / from a washing machine

A Brief Guide to Concrete Poetry

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

Works of concrete poetry are as much pieces of visual art made with words as they are poems.

Spotlight Audio: Nick Laird reads "The More Loving One" by W. H. Auden

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well / That, for all they care, I can go to hell, / But on earth indifference is the least / We have to dread from man or beast.

Spotlight Poet: C. D. Wright

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

A recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2005, C. D. Wright is the author of twelve collections of poetry and prose, most recently Rising, Falling, Hovering.

Marilyn Hacker on Brooks, H. D., and Rukeyser: Three Women Poets in the First Century of World Wars

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:03:00 EST

These three American poets demonstrate radical and radically different strategies with which poetry can confront and represent extreme situations.

David Baker: Elegy and Eros - Configuring Grief

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

"Both Whitman and Dickinson purposely infuse a radical and personal erotic into the elegiac tradition."

Spotlight Poet: J. Michael Martinez

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

Recipient of the 2009 Walt Whitman Award for a first collection, Martinez is the author of Heredities, which will be published in 2010.

Spotlight Audio: Carol Frost reads "The Part of the Bee's Body Embedded in the Flesh"

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

The bee-boy, merops apiaster, on sultry thundery days / filled his bosom between his coarse shirt and his skin / with bees--his every meal wild honey.

A Brief Guide to the Symbolists

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

A link between their romantic precursors and their surrealist successors, the Symbolists were undeniably influential and built their structures and conceits upon grand, illogical, intuitive associations.

George Oppen: New Poems, Audio, and Biography

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

About Oppen, poet James Longenbach has written: "Oppen's respect for the art of making, no matter how small, is at every moment palpable, and it infuses his work with sweetness that makes difficulty feel like life's reward."

Forrest Gander: Finding the Phenomenal Oppen

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

It is in his attitude, his attitude toward words / that George Oppen finds the ground for being and so / creates poetry that is, for me, a source for a richer and more / communal life.

Eliot Weinberger: A Little Heap for George Oppen

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

A neighbor, for a few of those years, was D. W. Griffith, whose studio was nearby in Mamaroneck. They may never have met, though the child later mastered and adapted certain of the director's inventions. The close-up and the iris: the isolation of the particular in the panorama of history or of culture.

Spotlight Poet: Sherman Alexie

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, was born in 1966 on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington.

Poetic Form: Found Poem

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.

Spotlight Audio: Karen Volkman reads "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; / It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil / Crushed.

Spotlight Poet: Ann Lauterbach

Fri, 29 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

John Ashbery has said: "Ann Lauterbach's poetry goes straight to the elastic, infinite core of time."

New in the Poetry Store: Exclusive Wallace Stevens Quote T-Shirt

Thu, 07 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

This ultra-high quality black American Apparel tee features a line from Wallace Stevens' poem Le Monocle de Mon Oncle screen-printed in striking electric blue lettering on the back of the shirt, with the scansion of that line across the front. This shirt is available exclusively from Poets.org, and comes in XL, L, M, and S unisex sizes.

By Hand: Lines for Mother's Day

Thu, 07 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

There is no substitute for the intimacy of a handwritten note, no gift as singular as words carefully considered and chosen. The impulse to personalize correspondence is evident in the custom to sign letters by hand, even when the rest is typed.

Spotlight Poet: Carol Ann Duffy

Thu, 07 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

Just appointed Britain's Poet Laureate, Duffy is the first woman to hold the position in its 341 year history, a post once held by Dryden, Tennyson, and Wordsworth.

Free Verse Project Gallery

Thu, 07 May 2009 01:03:00 EST

Write lines from a favorite poem on a sandy beach, assemble twigs on a hillside, or chalk the sidewalk. Take a photo before it disappears and post it in the Free Verse group page on Flickr, or on the Academy's Fan Page on Facebook. Be sure to include the source of your lines in the photo caption.

Poems for Spring

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

Spring is like a perhaps hand / (which comes carefully / out of Nowhere)arranging / a window,into which people look(while / people stare / arranging and changing placing / carefully there a strange / thing and a known thing here)and / changing everything carefully

Spotlight Audio: Deborah Digges reads "Telling the Bees"

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

It fell to me to tell the bees, / though I had wanted another dutyâ / to be the scribbler at his death, / there chart the third day's quickening.

New Spring Books

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

A list of new poetry titles that will be published in spring 2009 by the sponsors of National Poetry Month. Browse the list by poet, title, or press. Click on a title to get more information and a sample poem.

Spotlight Audio: David Kirby reads Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

The sea is calm tonight. / The tide is full, the moon lies fair / Upon the straits...

Philip Booth: Robert Frost's Prime Directive

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

"Directive" reads to me like the height of Frost's poetry, the poem he climbed toward for perhaps forty years. Imagery and tone both tell that he's taken this road before...

Carol Frost: Sincerity and Inventions in Robert Frost

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

Frost spoke at some length about tone, believing as he did that the "One who concerns himself with it [the sound of sense] more than the subject is an artist..."

Stanley Burnshaw: Robert Frost's Contrarieties

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

Contrarieties, opposing goods, opposing truths: they are everywhere in his art...

National Poetry Month: Poem-a-Day

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

National Poetry Month: Poets Workshop

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

Updated frequently, find generative writing exercises and reading assignments to inspire and engage.

National Poetry Month: NaPoWriMo Pledge Drive

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 01:03:00 EST

Each year poet bloggers throughout the country participate in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). An adaptation of National Novel Writing Month, NaPoWriMo challenges participants to write and post a poem each day in April.

Poetic Form: Epigram

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

An epigram is a short, pithy saying, usually in verse, often with a quick, satirical twist at the end. The subject is usually a single thought or event.

Contradictory Classicists: Rosanna Warren on Frank Bidart and Louise GlÃ¼ck

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

"Bidart's poems crucify themselves between their confessionalism and their classicism."

On Sale Now: Poem In Your Pocket Anthology

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

Published in conjunction with the Academy of American Poets, Poem in Your Pocket enables you to select a poem you love, neatly tear it out from the book, and then carry it with you all day to read, be inspired by, and share with coworkers, family, and friends. This innovative format features 200 poems from Shakespeare to Sexton, cleverly organized by theme. This collection also features an introduction by U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan.

Spotlight Poet: Keith Waldrop

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

Born in Kansas, Keith Waldrop met his wife, the poet and translator Rosmarie Waldrop, in 1954, while stationed in Kitzingen, Germany with the United States military. Together they founded Burning Deck Press, in 1968.

Groundbreaking Book: Geography III by Elizabeth Bishop (1977)

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

Unlike her contemporaries, Bishop avoided explicit accounts of her personal life, and focused her crafted lines on subtle impressions of the physical world.

Spotlight Poet: Anna Akhmatova

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

After publishing her first book in 1912, Akhmatova became a cult figure among the literary scene in Russia and a leader of Acmeism, a movement which praised lucid, carefully-crafted verse.

A Brief Guide to the Beat Poets

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

The end of World War II left poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso questioning mainstream politics and culture.

Chances of Survival: Philip Booth in Conversation

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

I strongly feel that every poem, every work of art, everything that is well done, well made, well said, generously given, adds to our chances of survival by making the world and our lives more habitable.

Wallace Stevens: Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

At the earliest ending of winter, / In March, a scrawny cry from outside...

Poetry and the Creative Mind: Tickets Now on Sale

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:03:00 EST

This year's benefit will include readings by Jorie Graham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Chip Kidd, Wynton Marsalis, Steve Reich, and other special guests to be announced.

Spotlight Audio: Fanny Howe reads from "Far and Away"

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

The rain falls on. / Acres of violets unfold. / Dandelion, mayflower / Myrtle and forsythia follow.

A Brief Guide to the Fireside Poets

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

The Fireside poets (also called the "schoolroom" or "household" poets) were the first group of American poets to rival British poets in popularity in either country.

Spotlight Poet: Dean Young

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Largely influenced by the New York School, Young's work combines aspects of experimentation and surrealism. About him, Charles Simic wrote: "This man reminds us that there is nothing more serious than a joke."

Spotlight Poet: Eric Pankey

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

The son of two accountants, Eric Pankey published his first collection, For the New Year, after it was selected by Mark Strand as the winner of the 1984 Walt Whitman Award.

Frank O'Hara: Why I Am Not a Painter

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

I am not a painter, I am a poet. / Why? I think I would rather be / a painter, but I am not...

Spotlight Audio: Rusy Morrison reads "basin of hills..."

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

please advise stop / basin of hills polished with the pour of sunset / please / easing down on one knee...

Celebrate Black History Month

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Celebrate and explore the rich tradition of African American poetry through essays on literary milestones, intersections of music, poetry and art, and profiles and poems of historical and contemporary poets who continue to pioneer new ground while keeping an eye on the past.

The State of the Preface Address: on Wordsworth and Common Speech

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

In an essay that examines the endurance of common speech in poetry, Tom Thompson argues that Wordsworth's Preface, written to support a poetic "experiment" in 1800, is now the rule.

Valentine's Day Special: Poetry Pairings

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Woo your sweetie by pairing the perfect poem with dessert, drinks, and flowers. The irresistible combination is sure to result in wobbly knees, a melting heart, and a thoroughly smitten valentine. From lustful to sacred verse, and classic to contemporary authors, pick up a few ideas from this selection of ten poetic pairings to lure your adored one straight into your arms.

Valentine's Day Special: Poems of Heartache and Difficult Love

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

What have I to say to you / When we shall meet? / Yetâ / I lie here thinking of you. / The stain of love / Is upon the world. / Yellow, yellow, yellow, / It eats into the leaves...

Valentine's Day Special: Poems of Breakup and Separation

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

It ended, and the morrow brought the task. / Her eyes were guilty gates, that let him in / By shutting all too zealous for their sin: / Each sucked a secret, and each wore a mask. / But, oh, the bitter taste her beauty had.

Valentine's Day Special: Poems of Passion and Sex

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Body, remember not only how much you were loved, / not only the beds where you lay, / but also those desires for you, / shining clearly in eyes / and trembling in a voiceâand some chance / obstacle thwarted them.

Valentine's Day Special: Poems of Love and Romance

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Therefore the Love which us doth bind, / But Fate so enviously debars, / Is the conjunction of the Mind, / And opposition of the Stars.

Free Poetry Valentines

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Free cards to share by paper or screen with your sweethearts, friends, family, classmates, and co-workers. From the irreverent to romantic, they feature lines from Emily Dickinson, Andrew Marvell, E. E. Cummings, Robert Frost, Robert Desnos, and James Wright. Just download, print, and send.

Poetic Form: The Rondeau

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

The rondeau began as a lyric form in thirteenth-century France, popular among medieval court poets and musicians.

Spotlight Audio: A. Van Jordan reads "From"

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

from, prep. 1. Starting at (a particular place or time): As in, John was from Chicago, but he played guitar straight from the Delta...

Alberto Blanco: The Parakeets

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

They talk all day / and when it starts to get dark / they lower their voices / to converse with their own shadows...

New Chancellors: Edward Hirsch and Marilyn Hacker

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Read their biographies and selected poems at poets.org/ehirs and poets.org/mhack.

John Updike: 1932-2009

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 01:03:00 EST

Though predominantly known as a novelist, John Updike wrote several collections of poetry, most recently Americana and Other Poems.

Elizabeth Alexander: Praise Song for the Day

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:03:00 EST

Each day we go about our business, / walking past each other, catching each other's / eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. / All about us is noise.

Robert Frost and JFK's Inauguration

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 01:03:00 EST

In the words of the poet William Meredith, the decision to include Frost in the inauguration "focused attention on Kennedy as a man of culture, as a man interested in culture." Kennedy's decision to include Frost, however, was more likely a personal gesture to the poet, who was responsible for much of the momentum early in the President's campaign.

Poems About War

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:03:00 EST

Some of the world's oldest surviving poems are about great armies and heroic battles. While Homer may have idealized his combatants and revered their triumphant fighting, the treatment of war in poetry has grown increasingly more complex since then.

Inger Christensen: I. Up they soar

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:03:00 EST

Up they soar, the planet's butterflies, pigments from the warm body of the earth...

Elizabeth Alexander: Inaugural Poet

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

Selected to read at President Barack Obama's inauguration, Alexander is the author of four books of poems, including American Sublime, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Spotlight Poet: James Dickey

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

Applauded for their ambitious experimentation with language and syntax, Dickey's poems address humanity and violence by presenting the instincts of humans and animals as antithetical to the false safety of civilization.

Spotlight Audio: Major Jackson reads "Letter to Brooks [Spring Garden]"

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

When you have forgotten (to bring into / Play that fragrant morsel of rhetoric, / Crisp as autumnal air), when...

New Audio: Rusty Morrison reads 'only gray rocks with drifting mist...'

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

Please advise stop. / Only gray rocks with drifting mist..."

Spotlight Audio: Maxine Kumin reads 'Purgatory'

Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

And suppose the darlings get to Mantua, / suppose they cheat the crypt, what next? Begin / with him, unshaven.

Constantine Cavafy: Poems of Passion and Philosophy

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

...listenâyour final pleasureâto the voices, / to the exquisite music of that strange procession, / to say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing...

Wallace Stevens: Poetry Is a Destructive Force

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

That's what misery is, / Nothing to have at heart. / It is to have or nothing...

Yvor Winters vs. Hart Crane

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:03:00 EST

In his review of The Bridge, Winters reported that "the flaws in Mr. Crane's genius are, I believe, so great as to partake, if they persist, almost of the nature of public catastrophe.

Poems About Thanks and Gratitude

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:03:00 EST

Poems for giving thanks from W. S. Merwin, Marvin Bell, Christian Hawkey, Rumi, James Weldon Johnson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Browning, and others.

Spotlight Poet: Claude McKay

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 01:03:00 EST

Born in Jamaica, West Indies, in 1889, Claude McKay influenced the writers of the Harlem Renaissance and gained the deep respect of younger black poets, including his friend Langston Hughes.

Walt Whitman: I Hear America Singing

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:03:00 EST

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, / Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, / The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam...

Emily Dickinson: Hope is the thing with feathers (254)

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:03:00 EST

Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, /And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all...

Halloween Treats from Poets.org

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

A ghoulish collection of spooky poems, a guide to poets' graves, and poems for the hellish depths of the underworld.

Carl Phillips: Some Thoughts on Reading

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

If it is true that what we read helps shape us, just as true is that our choices in reading are the result of our sensibility...

Walt Whitman First Book Prize Deadline: November 15th

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

The Walt Whitman Award brings first-book publication, a cash prize of $5,000, and a one-month residency at the Vermont Studio Center to an American who has never before published a book of poetry. The winning manuscript, chosen by an eminent poet, is published by Louisiana State University Press.

Spotlight Audio: Simon Armitage reads "The Shout"

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

We went out/ into the school yard together, me and the boy / whose name and face...

Amy Lowell: The Congressional Library

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

Where else in all America are we so symbolized / As in this hall? ...

Spotlight Poet: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

Born in 1803, Emerson challenged traditional thought and was the chief spokesman for Transcendentalism, believing that everything in the world, even a drop of dew, is a microcosm of the universe

Rafael Campo: Of Poetry and Medicine

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

Interviewed by Cortney Davis, physician and poet Rafael Campo discusses the shared attributes of caregiving and writing.

Spotlight Poet: Arna Bontemps

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

Born in Louisiana in 1902, Arna Bontemps was a successful novelist, poet, historian and biographer and much of his writing was dedicated to portraying the life of African Americans.

Spotlight Audio: Darcie Dennigan reads "Sentimental Atom Smasher"

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

So this guy walks into a bar and asks for a beer. Sorry, / the bartender says, I only sell atom smashers...

Poems for Times of Turmoil

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

An open letter from Academy of American Poets Executive Director Tree Swenson, and a selection of poems.

Autumn Poems

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

Poems for the Fall from Robert Frost, Larry Levis, Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Wright, Tomas Transtromer, John Keats, and others.

Charles Reznikoff: Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

The solid houses in the mist / are thin as tissue paper; / the water laps slowly at the rocks...

Henri Cole Wins 2008 Lenore Marshall Award

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

About Cole's winning book, judge John Koethe remarked: Henri Cole has become one of his generation's most assured and accomplished poets, and Blackbird and Wolf is a powerful and masterful book: powerful in the psychological directness of its self-scrutiny, and masterful in its achievement of a poetry so artful it almost seems artless.

Donald Revell: Election Year

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

A jet of mere phantom / Is a brook, as the land around / Turns rocky and hollow...

In Memoriam: Hayden Carruth (1921 - 2008)

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

About Hayden Carruth, the poet Galway Kinnell has said, "This is not a man who sits down to 'write a poem'; rather, some burden of understanding and feeling, some need to know, forces his poems into being."

Wendell Berry: My Friend Hayden

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 01:03:00 EST

"I donât think I could have said then why...Haydenâs poems meant as much to me as it did. But the poems sank deeply into me, and they consoled me. By now I can say why."

Frank O'Hara: Personism: A Manifesto

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

According to poet and critic Stephen Burt, the essay "serves as a backhanded guide to O'Hara's own practice."

Spotlight Audio: Gregory Pardlo reads "Copyright"

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Of course I know the story of the scorpion / and the frog. I've known Biggers all my life. / I've cast down my bucket...

Spotlight Poet: H.D.

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Through her close relationship with Ezra Pound, H. D. grew interested in and quickly became a leader of the Imagist movement.

Spotlight Audio: Stanley Plumly reads "To Autumn" by John Keats

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run...

Reginald Shepherd: 1963 - 2008

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Marilyn Hacker has called Shepherd "a writer always concious of the shadowy borders where myth and historyâhis own and Western civilization'sâmingle."

Adam Kirsch: Now that no one looking

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Now that no one looking at the nightâ / Sky blanked by leakage from electric lamps...

A Brief Guide to Kanaka Maoli Poetry

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Kanaka Maoli has become associated with poets who attempt to honor the use of native Hawaiian language in their work.

Spotlight Poet: Mona Van Duyn

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

Born in Iowa in 1921, Mona Van Duyn is the author of ten collections of poems, including To See, To Take, which received the National Book Award in 1971.

Spotlight Audio: Carl Phillips reads George Herbert's "The Pulley"

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:03:00 EST

When God at first made man, / Having a glass of blessings standing by, / "Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can. / Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, / Contract into a span."

Poems for the Clothesline

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

From ready-to-wear to haute couture, poetry addresses the coat, the jacket, the shoe and other loved articles we keep closest to us.

James Tate: Teaching the Ape to Write Poems

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

They didn't have much trouble / teaching the ape to write poems: / first they strapped him into the chair...

Mahmoud Darwish 1942-2008: New Bio, Poems, and Essay

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

"Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging," writes poet Naomi Shihab Nye about the eminent writer who died this August after undergoing heart surgery in Texas. In a retrospective written by his translator, Fady Joudah explains: "his writing stands clearly at the border of earth and sky, reality and myth, love and exile, poetry and prose." Learn more about Darwish, and read the essay and a selection of his poems.

Spotlight Poet: Frank O'Hara

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

One of the most distinguished members of the New York School of poets, Frank O'Hara wrote impromptu lyrics that jumble witty talk, journalistic parodies, and surrealist imagery.

Julie Agoos: Primogeniture

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

Someone put that basket under the dresser. / Chose to. Bent. Kicked it maybe...

Spotlight Audio: Ron Silliman reads from "What"

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

The flower sermon: / critique is like a swoon / but with a step increase, / the awkward daughter who grows / to join the NBA.

Great Anthology: The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

Spanning over two hundred years, Michael Harper's and Anthony Walton's anthology produces a vast narration of struggle, love, race, and redemption through the work of fifty poets.

Milton: 400 Years

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:03:00 EST

Celebrate the quadracentennial of one of history's greatest poets, with poems, prose, translations, a biography and more from Poets.org

Spotlight Audio: Billy Collins reads "Forgetfulness"

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

The name of the author is the first to go / followed obediently by the title, the plot, / the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel / which suddenly becomes one you have never read, / never even heard of...

Academy Chancellor Kay Ryan named US Poet Laureate

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

Chancellor Kay Ryan has just been named US Poet Laureate. Learn all about her - and read poems, listen to audio, and watch video of Ryan - on Poets.org

Poems for Summer

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

Beat the heat with poems by Rita Dove, William Meredith, Lynda Hull, Jack Spicer, Liam Rector, Joshua Beckman, Derek Walcott, Mark Jarman, and more.

Wislawa Szymborska: Nothing Twice

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

Nothing can ever happen twice. / In consequence, the sorry fact is / that we arrive here improvised...

Galway Kinnell: Fleshing Out Music, Breaking the Heart

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

After serving in the United States Navy and touring Europe and the Middle East, Kinnell worked as an activist, eventually publishing The Book of Nightmares, a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War.

Poetic Form: Limerick

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

A popular form in childrenâs verse, the limerick is often comical, nonsensical, and sometimes even lewd.

Spotlight Audio: Marie Ponsot reads "This Bridge, Like Poetry, is Vertigo"

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

"Describing the wind that drives it, cloud rides between Earth and space..."

Poems of the American Revolution

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:03:00 EST

The struggle for American independence inspiredâand continues to inspireâa vast body of literature. Read an essay tracing this tradition, along with poems by William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, and others, all written as a new nation was being born.

VIDEO - Kay Ryan: Chickens and the Funnies

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

"The chickens are circling and blotting out the day." Now that's a really funny thing to say. You know, somebody has written me a letter and told me: "I love your poem 'Home to Roost' but you should know we raise chickens, and you need to know chickens don't really fly."

Spotlight Poet: Adonis

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Adonis has fearlessly experimented with form and content, pioneering the prose poem in Arabic, and taking a influential, and sometimes controversial role in Arab modernism.

Poetic Technique: Dramatic Monologue

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Also known as a persona poem, the dramatic monologue offers one person's speech without overt analysis or commentary.

Gaius Valerius Catullus: Let Us Live and Love

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love; / And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, / Let us not weigh them.

"Howl" and the Paperback Revolution

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

With all the passion and drama surrounding "Howl and Other Poems", it's interesting to consider that the bulk of the cultural weight that it carries comes not from its text but instead from its material form.

William Wordsworth: Champion of Common Speech

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

A champion of common speech in poems, Wordsworth challenged poetry to include the so-called vulgarities of reality, and propelled the Romantic period by calling for "emotion recollected in tranquility."

Spotlight Audio: Wanda Coleman reads "American Sonnet (35)"

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

boooooooo. spooky ripplings of icy waves. this / umpteenth time she returns...

James Galvin: Art Class

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Let us begin with a simple line, / Drawn as a child would draw it, / To indicate the horizon...

Scrapple from the Apple: Jazz and Poetry

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Jazz has had extensive influence on poetry, and many of our contemporaries, as far-ranging as Wanda Coleman and Marie Ponsot, have used jazz in their poems.

Carpe Diem: A Selection of Poems for Making the Most of Time

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Let us roll all our strength and all / Our sweetness up into one ball, / And tear our pleasures with rough strife / Thorough the iron gates of life: / Thus, though we cannot make our sun / Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Li-Young Lee: Immigrant Blues

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

People have been trying to kill me since I was born, / a man tells his son, trying to explain...

New Audio: Jackson Mac Low reads "Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair"

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

A feather table: reckless gratitude. / It is that-there that means best. / White the green grinding trimming thing!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Melancholy, Courtesy, Deference

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Known for his long narrative poems, Longfellow's poems were widely translated, making him one of the most famous writers of his day.

Stanley Plumly: Spirit Birds

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

The spirit world the negative of this one, / soft outlines of soft whites against soft darks...

Barbara Guest: A Profile by Peter Gizzi

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

In Guest's hands, art can say something about itself without becoming pedantic; it can be absorbed in the quandaries of perception without getting lost. Her poems more often evoke the joy of being found.

Spotlight Audio: Terrance Hayes reads "At Pegasus"

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

They are like those crazy women / who tore Orpheus / when he refused to sing, / these men grinding / in the strobe...

Groundbreaking Book: The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

This 1973 book was nominated for a National Book Award and contains many of Hugo's most loved and anthologized poems.

Spotlight Audio: Nathaniel Mackey reads "Song of the Andoumboulou: 21"

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

Next a Brazilian cut came / on Sophia picked. Paulinho's / voice lit our way for what / seemed eternity...

Eavan Boland: Quarantine

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

In the worst hour of the worst season / of the worst year of a whole people / a man set out from the workhouse with his wife...

Robert Louis Stevenson: Adventure and Romance

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:03:00 EST

A representative of neo-romanticism during the Modernist period, Stevenson was an incredibly popular and successful writer, though many leading critics initially dismissed his work entirely.

New Audio: Clayton Eshleman reads his translation of Cesar Vallejo's "LXI"

Tue, 27 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Tonight I get down from my horse, / before the door of the house, where / I said farewell with the cock's crowing.

Jonathan Thirkield wins 2008 Walt Whitman Award

Tue, 27 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Jonathan Thirkield has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Walt Whitman Award for his first book-length collection of poems, The Waker's Corridor, chosen by poet Linda Bierds from over 1,000 entries.

Groundbreaking Book: The Dream Songs

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Author of The Lost Pilot (1967), Tate's first collection influenced a generation of poets in the late sixties and seventies with its use of dream logic and psychological play.

James Tate: Down-Home Surrealism

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Author of The Lost Pilot (1967), Tate's first collection influenced a generation of poets in the late sixties and seventies with its use of dream logic and psychological play.

New Audio: Lyn Hejinian reads from "Happily"

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

"If we thrill to low hills because they are not composed / they are 'composed to our liking' / They say there is no defining that but to say that is / defining that, living in context"

Molly Peacock: Chance

Mon, 19 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

"may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you / and a love of the past so blind you would / venture..."

Cesar Vallejo: Intellectual Instigator

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Born in Peru, Vallejo's second poetry collection, Trilce, placed Latin American poetry at the center of the Western cultural tradition in the 1920s.

Great Anthology: Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Organized by historical tragedies of the twentieth century, these poems deal with events ranging from Armenian Genocide to the pro-democratic demonstrations in China.

Matthea Harvey: Strawberry on the Drawbridge

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

I tried eating one there on the bridgeâs fault line, listening out for / the dispatcherâs radio...

Spotlight Audio: Mark Jarman reads "Ground Swell"

Mon, 12 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Is nothing real but when I was fifteen, / Going on sixteen, like a corny song? I see myself so clearly then, and painfully...

Karen Volkman: Mutable Boundaries - on Prose Poetry

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

How can it be a poem at all, lacking that seemingly essential formal marker of poetry, the line-break?

For Mother's Day: Poems About Flowers

Fri, 09 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Mix a few paper flowers into your mother's day bouquet this year. Whether tulips or roses, orchids or lilies, find over fifty different poems arranged by flower.

Jorie Graham on the Fragility of Our Planet

Tue, 06 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Sometimes I feel I am living an extended farewell, where my eventual disappearance, my mortal nature, normally a deep human concern, has been washed away by my fear for the deeper mortalityâthe extinction-of other species, and of the natural world itself. I cannot look at the world hard enough.

Spotlight Audio: Michael Ryan reads "Reminder"

Tue, 06 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

Torment by appetite / is itself an appetite / dulled by inarticulate, / dogged, daily / loving-others-to-death...

Billy Collins: Introduction to Poetry

Fri, 02 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

I ask them to take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide...

New Audio: A.B. Spellman reads "After Vallejo"

Fri, 02 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

i will die in havana in a hurricane / it will be morning, i'll be facing southwest / away from the gulf.

Jason Shinder: 1955-2008

Thu, 01 May 2008 01:03:00 EST

I've never told this story. / Even at the moment / of dying, / I would say / it was someone else's.

Groundbreaking Book: "Selected Poems" by Marianne Moore

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The book is characterized by her distinctive use of a technique called "syllabics." While most poets either employ established meters or write free verse, Moore's poems are built from lines of counted syllables.

Add Verse To Your Email Signature - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Why not put some poetry in your email? Many email programs allow you to create personalized signatures that are automatically added to the end of every email you send.

Robert Duncan: The Grand Collage

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Associated with both the Black Mountain School and the San Francisco Renaissance, Robert Duncan forged a unique poetic style, presenting the poem as a "compositional field."

Start a Notebook on Poets.org - 30 Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Our "My Notebooks" feature serves as a scrapbook, allowing you to store links to items on the site that you want to keep track of, such as poems, biographies, upcoming events, and audio clips.

Buy a Book of Poems For Your Library - 30 Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Many libraries have undergone or are facing severe cuts in funding. These cuts are often made manifest on library shelves.

Ars Poetica: Poems about Poetry

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

"To write about poetry is to believe that there are answers to some of the questions poets ask of their art, or at least that there are reasons for writing it."

Spotlight Audio: Carolyn Kizer reads "Parent's Pantoum"

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Where did these enormous children come from, / More ladylike than we have ever been? / Some of ours look older than we feel. How did they appear...

Organize a Poetry Reading - 30 Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

When looking for a venue, consider your local library, coffee shop, bookstore, art gallery, bar, or performance space.

Edgar Allan Poe: The Heresy of the Didactic

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

In his essay on poetics, Poe defines "the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty."

Read Literary Criticism - 30 Ways To Celebrate National Poetry Month

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Poets writing about their own genre can often be illuminating, such as Wordsworth's preface to Lyrical Ballads, or T.S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent." Most of the major writers of the twentieth century also wrote prose about poetry.

Aime Cesaire: 1913-2008

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The late poet, playwright, essayist, and political activist Aime Cesaire helped establish the literary and ideological movement known as Negritude.

Video: Poem In Your Pocket Day

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The staff of the Academy of American Poets takes to the streets of NYC to distribute poems for the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day.

Start a Poetry Reading Group - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Ask everyone to bring a favorite poem or two to share with the others. A member of the group can nominate a title for the next meeting.

Today is Poem In Your Pocket Day!!

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day by carrying around a poem to share with friends and family.

Clayton Eshleman wins Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Clayton Eshleman received the 2008 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, selected by Jerome Rothenberg, for his translations of Cesar Vallejo.

New Audio: Walt Whitman reads from "America"

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons, all, all alike endear'd, grown, ungrown, young or old...

Take a Poem Out to Lunch - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Adding a poem to lunch puts some poetry in your day and gives you something great to read while you eat.

April is the Cruelest Month (Especially on Tax Day)

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

To mark past tax days, the Academy has distributed thousands of free copies of The Waste Land at selected post offices across the country.

Common Language: Robert Hass in Conversation

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

A recipient of a 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Robert Hass discusses the office of the Poet Laureate and its role in American culture.

Subscribe to a Literary Magazine - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Full of poetry, short fiction, interviews, and reviews, journals are at the forefront of contemporary literature.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Charged With Grandeur

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Regarded as one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era, Hopkins helped rejuvenate poetic language by developing new rhythmic effects.

Listen to a Poem - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Hearing an author read his or her own work can clarify questions about meaning and tone.

Google a Poem - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Many people carry single lines of verse with them, sometimes for years, and are eager to remember the rest of that particular poem.

Robert Fagles: 1933 - 2008

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

"When Alexander Pope translated The Iliad and The Odyssey, he had a crew of clerks working for him, basically, translating and he was doing the finished versions. Bob Fagles did it all himself."

Lucie Brock-Broido: Ornament and Deep Feeling

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The author of three collections, Brock-Broido has been praised for poems that are "gorgeous and mournful, ornate and deeply felt."

Read a poem at an open mic - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

It's a great way to meet other writers in your area and find out about your local writing community.

Play Exquisite Corpse - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Each participant is unaware of what the others have written, thus producing a surprisingâsometimes absurdâyet often beautiful poem.

New Audio: Claudia Emerson reads "Homecoming"

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The camera is trained on the door, no one in the frame, only the dog sleeping...

Attend a Poetry Reading - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Each reading is unique, whether the poets are emerging or established, one never knows what to expect. You might be surprised or be emotionally challenged or laugh in fits.

Bring a Poem to Your Place of Worship - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Whether your spirituality leads you to a temple, church, sacred site, or theater, poetry and metaphysics often make a synergistic coupling.

Put Poetry in Unxpected Places - 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Books should be brought to the door like electricity or milk; they should be considered utilities.

Spotlight Audio: Ed Hirsch reads "The Widening Sky"

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

I am so small walking on the beach at night under the widening sky...

New Audio: Ed Ochester reads "Fred Astaire"

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The secret of his popularity was that he looked like a bus driver who could dance...

30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month - Memorize a Poem

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

The rewards of recalling a private anthology of well-loved poems are both immediate and long-lasting.

30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month - Read a Poetry Book

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:03:00 EST

Anthologies can be great starting points for browsing diverse styles and time periods...

Groundbreaking Book: Ariel, by Sylvia Plath

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:08:00 EST

Published posthumously in 1965, the darkly lyric poems in Sylvia Plath's Ariel address motherhood, sexuality, marriage, and her own experiences with depression.

New Audio: Paul Hoover reads from "Edge and Fold"

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:08:00 EST

"The real that's in the world is a word intending, absenting all it knows..."

Frank Stanford: It Wasn't a Dream, It Was a Flood

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:08:00 EST

The author of over ten collections of poetry, Stanford's work has been praised and elegized by many poets including Thomas Lux, James Dickey, and Franz Wright.

Custom Ringtones From Poets.org

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:08:00 EST

Rage against the dying of the light with free downloadable ringtones for your mobile phone, available in MP3, AAC, and iPhone (M4R) formats.

New Audio: Robert Lowell reads "Skunk Hour"

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:08:00 EST

"Nautilus Island's hermit / heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage; / her sheep still graze above the sea. / Her son's a bishop..."

New Audio: Afaa Michael Weaver reads "My Father's Geography"

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:56:00 EST

"I was parading the CÃ´te d'Azur, / hopping the short trains from Nice to Cannes,/ following the maze of streets in Monte Carlo..."

LifeLines Contest

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:56:00 EST

For National Poetry Month 2008, the Academy of American Poets asks you to share the lines of poetry that are the most vital to you, along with notes about the precise situation that summoned them to mind. All participants will automatically be entered to win a piece of jewelry by San Francisco designer Jeanine Payer. Payer specializes in hand-engraving lines of poetry on earrings, necklaces, and other items. The winner will have their "life line" hand-engraved on a specially chosen piece.Entries can be emailed to npm@poets.org until April 1, 2008.

Spotlight Poet: Louise GlÃ¼ck

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 11:56:00 EST

A former Poet Laureate, GlÃ¼ck has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award.

Stuart Dischell: Days of Me

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:17:00 EST

"When people say they miss me, / I think how much I miss me too..."

New Audio: Mark Jarman reads "Transfiguration"

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 05:17:00 EST

"They were talking to him about resurrection, about law, / about the suffering ahead. / They were talking as if to remind him who he was and / who they were. He was not..."

Lucinda and Miller Williams: All in the Family

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:27:00 EST

Singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, daughter of poet Miller Williams, discusses her music, her influences, and how her father has been her "toughest critic."

Spotlight Audio: Ron Padgett reads "Fairy Tale"

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:27:00 EST

"The little elf is dressed in a floppy cap / and he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrows..."

Poets.org Launches First Mobile Poetry Site

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:16:00 EST

The Academy of American Poets is proud to announce the launch of a mobile poetry archive which provides free and direct access to the entire collection of over 2,500 poems on Poets.org, as well as hundreds of biographies and essays, all in the palm of a hand. Poems can be browsed by author, title, occasion, or form, and searched easily by keyword. Visitors can read a poem, anytime, anywhereâwhether to fill a spare moment, woo a darling, toast a friend, find solace, or recite a few immortal linesâverse is now at your fingertips.

Howard Nemerov: A Primer of the Daily Round

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 09:49:00 EST

"A peels an apple, while B kneels to God, / C telephones to D, who has a hand / On Eâs knee"

Parallel Lines and Power Chords: A Meditative ABC on Rock 'n Roll and Poetic Composition

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:54:00 EST

"I is for interstate, the one that travels back and forth between investigation and identification. Interstate suggests Springsteen. I love the sheer wind-in-the-hair joy that "Born to Run" or "Jungle Land" induce â but I'm more fond of Nebraska. A moody boy, I'll take my minor-key melancholy with me for snack just about anywhere. I like his identification songs, but his laments seem more keen on investigation. Music and poetics that invite investigation as opposed to declaring identification have always been somewhat more attractive to me, but perhaps not as a teenager. Investigation might very well lead to identification, but without the former, without the cerebral play of a Stevens or the musical play of a Zappa, I feel we're not meeting our potential as souls and sprits, as well as bodies."

Spotlight Audio: Gwendolyn Brooks reads "We Real Cool"

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:54:00 EST

"We real cool. We / Left school. We / Lurk late. We / Strike straight. We..."

Poetic Form: Abecedarian

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:54:00 EST

Guided by alphabetical order, some of the earliest examples of this ancient poetic form occur in religious Hebrew poetry.

Save the Date! April 17th is National Poem in Your Pocket Day

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:56:00 EST

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 17. Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores. Create your own Poem In Your Pocket Day event using ideas below or let us know how you will celebrate Poem In Your Pocket Day by emailing npm@poets.org.

Amy Lowell: The Poet's Trade

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:56:00 EST

"The poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker."

Paul Celan: Dream, Fugue, and Death

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:56:00 EST

The son of German-speaking Jews killed by the Nazis, Paul Celan wrote some of the most compelling poems to emerge from the Holocaust.

Spotlight Audio: Thomas Sayers Ellis reads "All Their Stanzas Look Alike"

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"All their stanzas look alike. / All their fences, / all their prisons, / all their exercises, / all their agendas..."

John Donne: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"As virtuous men pass mildly away, / And whisper to their souls to go, / Whilst some of their sad friends do say..."

In Intervals: Robert Pinsky

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

In an interview with Tom Sleigh, Pinsky discusses the musicality of poetry, touching on topics such as jazz, the importance of voice in a poem, and the violent history of the English language.

Spotlight Poet: Mina Loy

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

Famously extolled by Pound, Loy has been labeled a Futurist, Dadaist, Surrealist, feminist, conceptualist, modernist, and post-modernist.

Victor Hernandez Cruz: Problems With Hurricanes

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"A campesino looked at the air / And told me: / With hurricanes it's not the wind..."

Spotlight Audio: Kenneth Koch reads "One Train May Hide Another"

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"In a poem, one line may hide another line, / As at a crossing, one train may hide another train. / That is, if you are waiting to cross / The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at / Least after the first train is gone..."

Poems of the Masters

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

For the past eight centuries "Poems of the Masters" has been China's most studied and memorized collection of verse.

Mary Ruefle: The Hand

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"The teacher asks a question. / You know the answer, you suspect you are the only one..."

Derek Walcott: The Voice of St. Lucia

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 10:06:00 EST

"Born in the West Indies, poet and playwright Derek Walcott has received numerous honors for his work, including the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Queen's Medal for Poetry."

Spotlight Audio: Robert Kelly reads "Prefix: Finding the measure"

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:59:12 EST

"Finding the measure is finding the mantram, / is finding the moon, as index of measure, / is finding the moon's source..."

Spotlight Essay: The Elements and Function of Poetry

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:59:12 EST

"The stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words is sound..."