Literature

Poetry

A Hectic Life

The bicentenary of Lord Byron’s death is an opportunity to ask what a witty dandy with the flamboyant attitudes of a raucously chauvinistic age can offer today’s world.

April 4, 2024 issue

Brenda Wineapple

‘The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit’

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad” and who often believed the Holy Spirit was speaking through him, the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.

February 8, 2024 issue

Anahid Nersessian

Transmissions from Another World

The first collections of Annelyse Gelman and Elisa Gonzalez are haunted by grief and confront the question of whether lyric poetry still offers something no other medium can.

January 18, 2024 issue

Ange Mlinko

Patterns of Uprooting

On opposite sides of the world—Poland and Uruguay—the poets Ida Vitale and Tomasz Różycki share a close attention to their own languages.

December 21, 2023 issue

Christopher Benfey

A Leaf or Two from Whitman

The promises and failures of the American twentieth century suffuse Ben Lerner’s new book of poems and Tom Piazza’s new novel.

December 21, 2023 issue

Matthew Bevis

A Tight Spot

A new exhibition shows that Elizabeth Bishop didn’t just send postcards; she collected, edited, and even made them.

December 9, 2023

Lucy Sante

Rhapsodies in Bop

A recent exhibition at the Morgan showed how thoroughly at home the poet Blaise Cendrars was among visual artists.

November 2, 2023 issue

Cathleen Schine

The Voyage Out

Selby Wynn Schwartz’s novel After Sappho is populated by the notable lesbians who helped modernism blossom.

October 19, 2023 issue

Poets on Poets

Charles Simic

Poems from the Abyss

When asked about his home, Czesław Miłosz said that he came from another planet, another time

November 23, 2017 issue

Dan Chiasson

Crossing the Invisible Line

The astonishing work of poet Eileen Myles set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match.

March 24, 2016 issue

Ange Mlinko

Acts of Extreme Attention

Karen Solie, the consummate poet of the Trans-Canadian Highway, has taken an evolutionary leap with her recent poetry, trading comedy for sublime beauty.

November 21, 2019 issue

John Ashbery

The Book that No One Knows

David Schubert’s poetry is like opening a window in a room that had become stuffy without one’s realizing it.

October 5, 2000 issue

The Latest

Karen Solie

The Barrens

a poem

December 19, 2024 issue

Ange Mlinko

The Shoals of Prose

Two recent books by poets embrace lyrical, subjective criticism to breach the porous border between verse and prose.

December 19, 2024 issue

Ishion Hutchinson

Snow Elegy

a poem

December 19, 2024 issue

Jorie Graham

The Killing Spree

a poem

December 5, 2024 issue

Adam Kirsch

In Search of Fullness

In his new book, the philosopher Charles Taylor looks at modern poetry as a unique record of spiritual experience in a secular age.

December 5, 2024 issue

Dean Browne

Scuttle

a poem

December 5, 2024 issue

John Kinsella

Pie-Dish Beetle Pursues Longer Life

a poem

November 21, 2024 issue

Langdon Hammer

‘The Kingdom of Ends’

Though he began writing near the end of the twentieth century, the poet Reginald Shepherd remained an unapologetic modernist who believed firmly in the autonomy of art.

November 21, 2024 issue

Emily Berry

The Room

a poem

November 21, 2024 issue

Shane McCrae

Sonnet in Which Most of the Rhymes Fail

a poem

November 7, 2024 issue