News Archive

BAM!—kids' poetry roundup.

Ron Butlin: From barnacle scraper to Edinburgh poet laureate.

It's bad enough finding your own book on sale, secondhand for 10 pence. What's worse is when you see the inscription: "To Mum and Dad."

Poetry Everywhere—even on your commute: Chicago Pace passengers to get an eyeful of verse.

Jean Sprackland's tip: "There is no one way to write a poem."

William Topaz McGonagall, world's "worst poet," has last laugh.

Give China a break?: "When we were poor, you thought we were dogs./When we loan you cash, you blame us for your debts."

Turning to Philip Whalen for a break from symbolic logic, a Blakean interlude.

Nuyorican Poets Café at 35: "This is the Yankee Stadium of poetry and theater and art."

Time coverboy Robinson Jeffers "set out to destroy the last genuine taboo."

"Don't assume you're the only one in the world who suffers": wise words from Simic.

Union Square Café: Poetry with your meal, like it or not.

Boston Jazz Week: Pinsky cooks!

William Stafford, conscientious objector.

"I love to visit the Strange": Jonathan Williams's small press legacy.

Do poets dream of motorbike monkeys? Michael Longley on Helen Denerley's scrap metal menagerie.

Gary Snyder reflects on the Ruth Lilly Prize and his latest book of "volcanoes, love, death and 9/11."

Yu Kwang-chung to incoming Taiwanese government: Save the language.

The city Eady and the country Eady.

Shakespeare: To philosophize, or not to philosophize.

Want to have a market for your next book of poems? Learn Korean.

Special poetry unit: Ice-T performs Langston Hughes.

Jason Shinder, RIP: Poet, educator, and former Ginsberg assistant.

Schiller: Losing his head?

My coffee with Carl: Friend of Sandburg tells all.

Good luck with that: Residents of Lesbos want to reclaim their name.

Frances Richey: war poetry for moms.

Something that isn't: Robert Hass talks.

"Two curmudgeonly country boys": Frost and Khruschev, reimagined in fiction.

Dana Gioia: "Nobody tells me they love Bob Dylan because they read the sheet music."

Saddam's journals: no remorse—but plenty of love poems.

Birthday boy Archibald MacLeish's Arizona visit.

More Tagore!

Day school director steps down.

Shrikrishna Kalamb: farmer, poet, suicide.

Which poet thought he resembled "C.S. Lewis on a drugs charge"?

Three for May: Lewis Warsh, Cristina Peri Rossi, and August Kleinzahler.

Who will perpetuate the shash maqam?: Ilyas Malayev, multilingual Queens poet, dies.

Eric Priestley: Watts poet fights to stay.

The actors are playing Russian roulette? Why, it's a rare staging of a Shel Silverstein play.

Michael Frayn: Boris Pasternak is a poet "even when he is writing prose."

Ta-Nehisi Coates: How hip hop is like a sonnet.

Murder, they wrote: Man accused in poem is acquitted.

The ballad of the double hibakusha: living through Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Poetry in the office: Line breaks instead of coffee breaks?

May Day 1965: Ginsberg is king.

Living with Parkinson's disease turns former teacher to poetry.

"The rocks we don't anticipate": The found poetry of Edgar Bronfman Jr.

Remembering Amal Donqol and Nizar Qabbani and the "Arab narrative of emancipation."

"I / clean my urine / on the flag / of my country": Mexico fines poet.

Feeling uninspired? Time to hit those science textbooks.

Tony Soprano, meet John Donne.

Roundup: August Kleinzahler and others.

Ishle Park: From slams to Queens laureateship.

Frances Richey: Seeing soldier son through a prism of war.

Adam Kirsch: outlet malls and Standard Oil.

From prarieland to Iceland: Bill Holm nabs McKnight award.

Something in the water? Bucks County breeds strong poets.

"Yes I did chop him, sar": Bloodaxe at 30 comes alive with multimedia offerings.

Mary Jo Salter: quips against forgetting.

"And you've even bought St Peter a large TV / To watch Manchester United."

Mekdes Jemberu's invisible decade.

Right on: Helen Vendler's Yeats.

More poet-fiction: Ron Hansen's Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Brian Hall's Fall of Frost: novel of poet's life too "loosey-goosey"?

Poet, get thee to a laboratory.

Collecting David Yezzi: "Twenty poems in five years! That's not what I would call prolific."

What? Could it be there are no Philip Larkin stories today? Fat chance.

Poetry is dead. No it's not. Yes it is. (Repeat.)

Sufi poet's resting place destroyed.

You want more on Dylan Thomas? Sure!

"So what will Ben do when he finds his plan didn't work? / Will he be forever regarded as an economic jerk?: Bernanke inspires ode.

How would you define Arab American poetry?

Surrounded by stupidity? Use it for inspiration.

Korean American poets and the Virginia Tech massacre.

Maya Angelou: "We all need to know that somebody was here before us."

Into the wild with Ruth Lilly winner Gary Snyder.

All Greek to you? That's the idea.

Thomas Wyatt: The grammar of a dream.

Why won't Bob Dylan give credit to Dylan Thomas?

Gary Young reluctantly defends the prose poem.

Tate's tip: Sit for an hour and a half. Then write.

"Trigger" actor's favorite poems: Keats and beyond.

Li-Young Lee: "Every player eventually dies."

Window to the future: Zimbabwe's Comrade Fatso blogs on Marley, Lennon.

Visiting Whitman.

Take it to "The Bridge": Cantata Singers do Hart Crane.

Coleman Barks's Rumi: translation as "sublime relaxation." (Also see our feature on Rumi.)

I can't sleep: Capathia Jenkins sings Nikki Giovanni.

Trendy T.S. Eliot.

A field guide to new poetry magazines on the web.

Sarah Ruden, The Aeneid's first female translator.

Allan Ahlberg: poet and children's book author once dug graves.

Suzanne Roberts: Bigmouth, smarty pants . . . and friend.

Rasta poet: It's not just about cannabis.

A rotary phone ringing in an empty house: Visiting Millay's home with Mary Oliver.

English beat: Poet Javed Akhtar on the decline of Hindi lyrics.

The poet who came in from the cold: Jang Jin-sung and a mother's heartbreaking choice.

"Let there be Mary Oliver"!

I sang a good omelette—and I'm not going to tell you what that means: Louis Rosen and Capathia Jenkins do Nikki Giovanni.

Still not in Saigon: Draft resisters' anthology released.

David Byrne on the late Robert Rauschenberg: "He spoke in constant puns and metaphors, like a stream-of-consciousness poet."

Digression of the Share: Poetry senior editor channels Robert Burton.

Simic: That poem you're writing? It's a draft.

Think William McGonagall is the worst poet ever? Harry Potter might think otherwise.

Everybody loves Shakespeare—it is Milton's turn?

Who won the war over modern poetry?

Stephen Romer: songs of self-exclusion.

Need inspiration? Go to the zoo.

Poet Phillis Levin weds.

Remembering Isaac Rosenberg, war poet who died in the trenches.

Sorry, Venus Khoury-Ghata—I'm going to write about a book of quotations instead.

What's up? What's up? What's the word up? Is rap poetry?

Saul Williams on "Niggy Tardust."

Is Susan Howe's Dickinson a "homegrown poet of terror"?

Sapling from Milton's mulberry travels to Hay festival.

Them's fighting words—Pound style: "Stupidity carried beyond a certain point becomes a public menace."

Is Simic the Edward Hopper of poetry?

Will Carol Ann Duffy be the UK's first female poet laureate?

Who wrote "Footprints"? Inspirational-poem brouhaha revisited in court. (See our piece from last year.)

Kevin McFadden: like a home-cooked meal . . . made of words.

Jeff Stumpo: Bringing slams to central Texas.

Speaking of which: Will it be Duffy or Armitage?

Laureateship? Not interested. Oh wait—I get paid in wine?

After the quake—poetry: "Children, climb on a dandelion."

And your bird can sing: Not a jock? Try poetry to woo a mate.

Nathaniel Mackey receives Henderson award for African American lit.

Wild West Storyfest: Come for the cowboy versifiers, stay for the BBQ dinner.

Nigel Smith: Is Milton better than Shakespeare? Adam Kirsch: No.

Devil in the details: Tasmanian poet Kathryn Lomer wins Aussie prize.

Isaac Rosenberg: an infantryman's poetry.

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers": Langston Hughes's Kansas roots.

Watch that statue! Toronto monument to Al Purdy looks so natural it might walk away.

Mary Oliver and our world's death by water.

Gail Rixen's tractor-ready verse.

Judge retires, gets back to primary passion: poetry.

Three Canadians and a Buffalonian—what's the punchline here?

Pop duo member John Hall's mustache goes AWOL, sparks verse.

"Romantic by temperament but ironical by conviction": David Daiches on American poetry, ca. 1959.

Reginald Franklin Lockett, Oakland's unofficial laureate, dies.

Following "Footprints": inspirational poem, copyright nightmare. (See our feature on the controversy.)

"There are no books that you cannot finish reading": Who wrote the Chinese earthquake poem?

Will Queen Elizabeth name a female poet laureate?

Claire Tomalin: Burying Hardy.

Extra! Extra! Maya Angelou doesn't speak at St. John's commencement!

Calendrical coincidence: Claude McKay and Langston Hughes both died on May 22.

English at 15: Charles Simic.

Lines for summer from Marvell, Anne Stevenson, and others.

Reginald Franklin Lockett, RIP: poet and Juke Box hero.

Rev. Jaroslav Vajda, poet laureate of hymns: "Now the silence/now the peace."

Forgotten Rimbaud document found in carton of old books.

Politicians are animals? They're nothing compared to poets!

Who are the UK's new voices?

Half neigh, half talk: a children's poetry roundup.

"Ordnung! Ordnung!" The Theodore Roethke centennial.

Adam Zagajewski in Israel: Revenge of the introvert.

Who's afraid of Homer?

Top five books of war poetry.

In a week when Billy Collins sold 900 books, YA poet Ellen Hopkins sold 7,000.

Michael Hoffman: on burger bars, translation, and more.

Roethke, bard of Saginaw.

Love is a battlefield: Talking to Frances Richey.

The simple art of Venezuela's Aquiles Nazoa.

Tried to make me go to poetry class, I said no, no, no.

Dances with Kleinzahler: "—Tatanka, Tatanka, cries Kevin Costner."

August Kleinzahler: Best Garden State poet since WCW?

You've experienced it as a CGI megatainment with a sleek Angelina. But are you prepared for Beowulf, the rock opera?

Hey Bulldog: Yale honors Paul McCartney! . . . And some guy named John Ashbery.

Crazzy Dave, homeless poet in Ottawa, gets verse collected for charity.

Floyd Skloot sez: "Don't rush to publish."

Amy Winehouse: Tomorrow's Sir Walter Raleigh?

Kristina Hard: New Zealand's young poets need exposure.

Court lady's waka poems found on ancient wooden strip.

On the trail of the Idaho Kid: Pound's childhood home opens.

George Garrett, RIP: Virginia laureate, professor . . . and Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster screenwriter.

At the Urdd Gobaith Cymru National Eisteddfod . . . Ifor ap Glyn!

Seamus Heaney bibliography tells us about pseudonyms, verse in Vogue.

Blast from the past: Ginsberg on Podhoretz.

If you're sick of seeing poetry only getting a "pity shelf" at the store, go to Hay.

Recovery mission: Paul Muldoon.

Robinson Jeffers–related projects get grants.

Film and poetry: How many degrees of Kevin Bacon gets you to T.S. Eliot?

Practice Poems? Can we read them yet?

No cooling time necessary—go get yourself some C.D. Wright.

"I'll never quit teaching to write poetry because there is no money in poetry."

Andrew Motion: Poet laureate should do things with zoos, football clubs.

Luis Omar Salinas, RIP: Poet and former Philip Levine student had "magnified authority."

"Both artist and poet agreed that the idea of the book was much more fun than the actual process."

Edna St. Vincent Millay and the bucket list.

Felicitation paper: Kazi Nazrul Islam, Bangladeshi poet.

Wendy Cope: Bestselling poet is also happy (a true story).

Dedicated lines: poets paying tribute to other poets.

Calabash report: Women rule, and Derek Walcott savages Naipaul.

Do we still need the Sixties?

Elaine Feinstein's Russian Jerusalem meditates on Mandelstam, Brodsky, Akhmatova, and others.