News Archive

Milton: A man possessed.

Shall we "wallow in the pigswill called The Lake Isle of Innisfree"?

Robert Crawford: "A seed's a tree's a ship's a constellation."

Factory records: Lisa Beatman taught envelope employees.

Suite Jane: Talking to Kate Colby.

Dan Machlin: choppy—but worthwhile.

Frieda Hughes on Gregory Woods's "Heart of Cold": "We must be resolute."

Thomas Lux: "the murder of (metaphorical) poets/ is not a bad idea in some cases."

Campbell McGrath's Seven Notebooks, from "Blueberry" to "Astral."

Frost prose gathering includes juvenilia and his poultry magazine articles.

NBCC Award nominee Mary Jo Bang: From being "poor in Ferguson" to heading Washington U.'s creative writing program.

Once you finish e.e. cummings's EIMI, check out his paintings.

Allen Grossman: "I've always taught the reading of poetry."

Toward completion: Creeley, Duncan, Spicer, Guest.

New book from Eileen Myles: "I like therapy because I don't need my glasses."

Today's trivia challenge: Name Ezra Pound's hometown.

Million's Poet: 7,000 hopefuls, 48 contestants—and one winner.

Who was the first black American poet writing in English?

Indran Amirthanayagam: Writing about the 2004 tsunami—from Maryland.

Cowboy poetry: Is it hereditary?

The Loch Ness poem.

Selected selections, Canada style.

Did brother Branwell write Emily Brontë's verse?

Happy Valentine? Yes, if you're Jean—you've just been named New York State's poet.

Equi, Goldbarth, and others nab nominations for L.A. Times Book Prize.

Shakespeare: poet or dramatist?

Auden: "All Americans are introverts."

Nick McDowell: Editing the complete Milton.

"We wrote our books not with ink but with blood": Simin Behbahani receives Stanford's Bita Prize for Literature and Freedom.

The magical meets the down-to-earth: William Bolcom meets William Blake.

Duality and coterie: Barrett Watten on Lytle Shaw's Frank O'Hara.

Late Gloucester poet Vincent Ferrini: intimate of Olson and subject of new film.

The miseducation of Robert Frost: "His grandparents thought that Harvard was too much of a drinking school."

The second coming of Philip Larkin.

Never larky: The little England poetry of Ray Davies.

"It's like high school English class, except about baseball!" (For more on baseball and poetry, read our story.

All together now: School children go for recitation record.

Andrew Motion writes five-act poem for oldest living WWI vet.

Leonard Nimoy's legacy: Spock—or celebrity poetry?

The grief study: Mary Jo Bang's Elegy wins NBCC Award.

Serge Gavronsky's AndOrThe: Riffing on Zukofsky.

Homespun Valentines courtesy the Koose.

"Salter’s elegance feels similarly motivated by a distaste for the unseemly."

A biography of the "utterly unknowable" Homer.

Close reading anyone? Poem allowed as evidence in murder trial.

The mighty small presses of Chicago.

Update on the Cathal O Searcaigh sex scandal.

Publisher-poet Felix Dennis: "Down with the nanny state."

Andrew Motion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and others on their life-changing poems.

Canon fodder: Time to brush up your Prufrock.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim: Poet—and Pakistan's next PM?

Zimbabwe's Comrade Fatso: Digging it deep.

Guinness-gunning recitation update: They did it!

Singing Mary Oliver.

Chaucer: Best poet to have served as a customs officer?

Saving grace: Goalie inspired Randall Maggs.

On Larkin: ""He knew whatever he wrote would be worth reading."

A presentation copy of Lyrical Ballads lands at the Wordsworth Museum.

Complete the sequence: Eliot, Auden, Plath, Larkin, Hughes, Heaney, and . . . ?

It's Burns Night. Time to celebrate . . . John Clare?

Grace Paley: questioning the ethics of activism in poetry.

Poetry Brothel: Get your private readings here—$10 gets you in.

Eliot: Great high modernist—and prankster.

Your teen doesn't need another ringtone . . . how about a poem?

Barbara Jane Reyes guest-edits Ocho on the Venn diagram principle.

Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen: poet—and ladies' man.

Auden and atonement.

Margaret Atwood–penned opera resurrects Canadian poet Pauline Johnson.

"Pale, untidy, elfin, precocious and entirely self absorbed": Let's hear it for Shelley!

Poetry vs. Alzheimer's.

Niche work if you can get it: the success of Poetry Speaks.

The Koose: object lessons.

Jewish day-school director's poetry stirs up controversy.

Margaret Drabble on Sylvia Plath: the physical shock, the perfect poem.

Against the Plath myth.

All the issues from the first decade of Poetry are now online—print 'em out and bind 'em!

You know you're a redneck when . . . you write a book of children's poetry?

Can a poetry slam hurt your teaching career?

Mathew Takwi: Cameroonian poet, fiery mountain.

Lesbian? Cool. Visually impaired? Right on. Poet? See ya!

Andrew Motion on Larkin's difficult truths.

Telegraph Poetry Masters, Day 5: Robert Browning.

Kenya dining: Would you like some wine with your meal? How about a poem?

Putin on kid's poet Sergei Mikhalkov: "a person of truly unique scale."

"Snow on snow": Christina Rossetti.

Particles and Lux.

The late Roberto Bolaño imagines a poet leading "a gang of soccer thugs."

Jeanette Winterson on Ted Hughes: translating "nature's hermetic language."

"Astonishingly brutal": Guantanamo poems.

Life beyond the study door: John Banville digs Seamus Heaney.

Postal worker wins big New Zealand book prize.

Too close for comfort: Terry Eagleton on Tom Paulin's Secret Life of Poems.

Alan Shapiro: Are you experienced?

There's only one "great" woman poet on the Guardian list? That's about right, thinks Frances Leviston.

Who's the best erotic poet? Or is the question moot?

Back to Ship Island: Natasha Tretheway.

Fear of poetry: A tyrant's guide to verse.

Publishing news: Yeats's A Vision, sonnet making, and more.

Jonathan Williams, RIP: Renaissance man hunted high and low.

Q: Are we seeing the ESPNing of Poetry magazine? A: Ask Leonard Nimoy.

At the New York Public Library, Milton comes roaring back from the margins.

Tall, handsome, and complex: William Boyd on Siegfried Sassoon.

Soho: "I sink we could even help zis Meester Speetzer."

Pundits search for poetry to match Bear Stearns collapse.

"The Platonic Bow": Was Auden verse too smutty for the Times? (Note: NSFW!)

It's the truth, Ruth: Why rhyming makes us believe.

Do poets die young?

"Am I out of key?": Two Philly poets.

Shapiro again, this time with Michael Chitwood.

Aleksander Hemon on poetry and war.

Andrew Hull: inspiration in the Outback.

Renewing Shel's shelf life.

Chinese PM: Govern in prose and poetry.

"I would promote experimentation and failure": Sounds like our kind of poet laureate!

To bear and be: Alan Shapiro's Old War.

Dear Longfellow: Will you write our class song for us?

Things continue to get poetical for U.K. pols, as Shadow Commons leader "burst[s] into verse."

"At Downing Street upon the stair, / I met a man who wasn't Blair": Who wrote scurrilous verse about British PM?

Flight of the discord: Michael Hofmann.

Jack Agüeros: writing psalms, fighting Alzheimer's.

Hone Tuwhare, RIP: First Maori to publish a poetry book in English.

"Another world is possible": Five minutes with UK poet laureate Michael Rosen.

The teenage bards of WriterCorps.

Update on Burmese acrostic poet Saw Wai: in hospital with hernia.

These days, a Michael Hoffman poem is "rare, strange, much valued item."

We can't lose poetry—it's better than fiction, and even text-messaging.

Obama speech brings to mind poems that address race.

Grace Paley: "Poetry may be done with me, but I'm not done with it." (Also see our recent feature.)

Darwinian ability to adapt, also good for writing about erotic love: Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland's The Making of a Sonnet.

For everyone from opposition leaders to taxi drivers, Pakistan is poetry country.

Hugo Claus, RIP: Belgian man of letters wrote "several thousand" poems.

Elizabeth Bishop, naturally.

Honoring poet and Pleiades editor Kevin Prufer.

Fatima Bhutto—niece of slain politician, and a poet.

"She wrote most of her poetry just laying on her sofa looking out the window": Harriet Cole and the benefits of nervous prostration.

Dial P for Poet.

Larry Woiwode: North Dakota poet laureate's memoir describes snow, New Yorker editor William Maxwell, and more.

Poets Bearing Witness: Beirut event focuses on suffering and destruction.

Aeronwy Thomas: Dylan's daughter to publish poems and visit the White Horse Tavern.

"The key's on your own tongue": Marie Ponsot on Alice Notley.

After UK poem ruffles feathers, time to acknowledge that "Poetry business is the real business"?

Writing Japanese poems in South Korea: "They despise you or dismiss you as a fool."

"Jabberwocky" on the basketball court.

San Francisco State University's poetry archives to go digital.

Cathal O Searcaigh: Center of sex scandal speaks up.

Psychic readings: Joyelle McSweeney on Hannah Weiner.

"I'm afraid this piece of paper / Just isn't big enough": Grieving mom releases late daughter's poem.

National Poetry Month goes celeb-tastic, with selections and readings by Gwyneth Paltrow, Mary-Louise Parker, and more.

What does your book cover say about your book?

Paul Shaffer turns nonagenearian's poem into rap video for synagogue's 100th anniversary.

Robert Hass: "What would you do if you were me?"

Poetry editor Harriet Monroe to Hart Crane: "Tell me how dice can bequeath an embassy."

X marks the spot: The return of Exene Cervenka.

Claudia Rankine goes multimedia, replays Zidane head-butt footage.

Drums along with a Mohawk: Slam vet Saul Williams as "Niggy Tardust."

On the bus: Stare listlessly out the window, or enjoy some winsome poetry-based animations?

Did Mancini get the title for "Moon River" from Ward Glenn's poetry radio show?

No beret required: Youth Speaks and other Bay Area poetry-month doings.

National collegiate poetry slam: Come thrash with me!

Saginaw to celebrate native son Theodore M. Roethke's centenary.

Ted Kooser: Insurance underwriter by day, poet by night—or rather, at 4 a.m.

The gadfly of Scaly Mountain: Jonathan Williams, RIP.

Isaac Rosenberg: "one of the greatest war poets" also a painter.

"Touched notice / none down safe": The latest generative poetry algorithm.

"It was like a floating kangaroo that kept itself invisible": Cryptic, groundbreaking treatment for autism.

Germaine Greer: defending Shakespeare's wife.

Lyrical about laptops: Robert Crawford.

Mary Oliver and the transcendent Bichon Frise.

Skull and bones: Exhuming Schiller's family to sample DNA.

British PM Gordon Brown's favorite poem "is not actually a poem," according to its author.

Robert Fagles, RIP: Popular translator of the big three.