News Archive

The strange horses of Edwin Muir.

Loss, art, new love: Edward Hirsch contains himself.

Let's hear it for beer poetry.

Plumly's Keats, 20 years in the making.

China earthquake sparks memorial poetry.

Why poetry matters—or doesn't—or does.

Frost: weathering the "terrible actualities."

Wendy Cope for UK laureate–not!

Mary Jo Salter: Here's to future days.

Making sense of the "Footprints in the Sand" lawsuit. (Take a refresher course with the Poetry Foundation's original article.)

Pleasure and ambition: Campbell McGrath gives Rilke a nod.

Like a hurricane: A talk with Katie Ford.

"Where is Billy Collins, who always made us laugh?"

Thomas Lux, guru.

Martín Espada: "Poetry humanizes."

One house, 80 rats: What would Robert Browning say?

The "haze as authentic": Early William Stafford collection.

That's entertainment: Simon Armitage verse in new Paul Weller album.

Michael Standen, RIP: poet and editor.

"We're not talking T.S. Eliot here": Hemingway volume's end pages contain Papa's scrawled verse.

Flame throwers: Japan's verbal gladiators.

A couple of ways of looking at Chuck Close.

Caroline Knox: flotsam and jetsam.

Why did Housman fall out of fashion?

You do know Jack: Listening to Kerouac.

Paula Gunn Allen, RIP.

Crime and punishment: Frost vandals required to study his poetry.

Mick Jagger's Dylan Thomas project.

Or will it be Robin Blaser . . . or David McFadden?

Maybe it'll be Nicole Brossard, author of Notebook of Roses and Civilization. (Learn more about translator Erin Moure.)

Who will win this year's Griffin Prize?

From Quote Poet Unquote: "Poetry is the only thing you can read when you're drunk."

Charles who?: McCain blanks on laureate question—but questioner gets it wrong, too.

Adam Zagajewski gets Milosz prize.

Raw expressions, plain words: After China earthquake comes Poems from the Rubble.

The mystery of Charles Murray's burned books.

"This motherless bunch": FLDS kids pen poems to Baptist caretakers.

Calabash: Walcott vs. Naipaul.

Michael McClure: The roaring '60s.

Beware internet poetry scams.

Why the next U.K. laureate needs to be a woman.

And Canada's Griffin Prize goes to . . .

Now that's fame: Warring States–era patriot-poet Qu Yuan was so popular people didn't want fish to eat his body.

It's June. Got a rhyme for moon?

Mary Oliver, resurgent.

Blast from the past: Gilbert Seldes on e.e. cummings.

Party pics from Griffin Prize gala.

Irish odd couple: Departing McGuinness pens barbed verse to Ian Paisley.

Keira Knightly: Dear Mom, Don't make me play Caitlin Thomas.

Pushkin turns 209.

Mick Imlah's lost causes.

Frank Bidart and "the source of fury," plus other new books.

Discovering Philip Lamantia's Tau and John Hoffman's Journey to the End.

The latest IT failure haikus.

"Everything here is intense": Two Old English anthologies.

Sachiko Murakami: When poetry meets CSI.

Aitzaz Ahsan: Writing secret poems in Pakistan.

More Dylan Thomas biopic news: Daughter Aeronwy's cameo nixed.

Natural history: Elizabeth Bradfield kicks off Red Hen Press's new lesbian line.

Frieda Hughes: Give me poets on DVD!

Dylan Thomas: Never mind the movie—let's see those costumes.

Climbing the Yellow Mountain, bridging Chinese and English.

In New York, poetry is no longer in motion.

Cornelius Eady and Toi Derricotte: Kray winners.

Lois Roisman, RIP: Poet, playwright headed Jewish philanthropic fund that gave to Obama.

Matthea Harvey's super flat times.

Bush at war—with language.

Andrei Codrescu: Would you trust a poet over a journalist?

Vijay Seshadri's The Disappearances: immediate cities and mutable landscapes.

On readings: "What atavistic urge draws us and what do we want to hear?"

Aeronwy Thomas and the night of the machine gun.

Putting Rupert Brooke online.

Feeling Pasternak's aura.

"She kept everything she wrote": Papers of Anne Spencer, Harlem Renaissance voice, to UVA.

The Gloucester laureate position is also controversial.

Wendy Cope, Fleur Adcock and Ruth Padel: Top female UK laureate contenders don't want the post.

"This is great literature -- American literature": Paula Gunn Allen, RIP—poet and advocate for Native American lit.

"I had a brother, we never saw each other": Cortázar's publishes poem written after Che's death.

Did People's Poet Mzwakhe Mbuli pull a gun on a shopowner?

Let there be lighght: Notes from the "Conceptual Poetry and Its Other" symposium.

Bunker mentality: 10-year-old's poem about Arab bomber provokes controversy.

Betty Jean Grant: one of 16 children, Buffalo legislator—and poet.

Ask Frieda Hughes: Some do's, some don'ts.

Pakistan: Poets predict "popular revulsion" if Musharraf allowed to flee.

Is town of Ceredigion doing enough to exploit interest in Dylan Thomas biopic?

Who will be the "Prince of Poets"? (First prize: Dh1,000,000.)

Heinrich Heine, the "torn poet."

Pop culture and lip gloss: David Trinidad.

James Reaney, RIP: Poet, Alphabet publisher.

Adelaide's Aidan Coleman: How to jazz up the "City of Churches"?

"Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme": Milton at 400.

The poet's eye: Paralyzed mother composes with blinks.

The work of William Topaz McGonagall: so bad it's good?

Wendy Cope's two cures for love.

Joyce Brinkman: Indiana laureate named daughter Muffett.

Will doctors finally get rid of their two-year-old copies of Sports Illustrated now that poetry's in the waiting room?

Maya Angelou and her loyalty to the Clintons.

T.S. Eliot contributes to London Library—by way of Cats.

O Searcaigh, where art thou?

Egyptian wordplay: This rooster is a bull . . . or is he something else?

Yes-woman: Alameda laureate Mary Rudge.

Poetry and mystery. (For more, see our feature on poetry and detective novelists.)

Don't do drugs—do poetry!

Guess how tall Maya Angelou is?

Trillium Prize goes to lesbian poet Rachel Zolf.

Ted Hughes birthplace opens.

Franconia: Frost in summer.

Sick of hearing about the Dylan Thomas biopic? Too bad.

Shipwreck and genius: Ron Hansen does Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Literary sleuth Ron Rosenbaum on a Shakespeare controversy.

What women don't want.

Nick Laird: "Where do poems come from?"

Don Paterson to be honored with OBE.

Just who is Raymond McDaniel?

O F C L T B: A good poem is like an eye-chart.

"In the wrong hands, this 'Dylan Thomas' biopic could have been a disaster."

John Milton: 400 years later.

Gloucester selects "political poet laureate." But people want laureate of their own.

Mark Doty reading in Pittsburgh. Good thing they like him.

Norway's National Poet turns 200.

“Grandpa, let me sing for you.” New Mexico youths perform in DC slam festival.

After 700 years, a pardon for Dante.

Conviction of "lyrical terrorist" overturned.

You say "tomato," I say "clichéd doggerel."

Prison poets.

More from the Village Voice archives! More Ginsberg!

Self Portrait in a Convex Microphone: Ashbery at the Griffin awards.

Just in case you still haven't heard enough about the Dylan Thomas movie.

"Before encouraging women to run panting like little lap-dogs after a post that was designed originally by, and for, male poets . . . perhaps we should pause and work out what a genuine 21st-century version of the job might look like."

Looking back at Robert Lowell.

UN commemorates Abu Abdullah Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki.

RIP James Reaney: Professor, poet, playwright, novelist, storyteller, musician, and visual artist.

Indiana gets new poet laureate.

Charles Bukowski: "A complete, harmonized, real, dirty old man."

Owen Wilson: "Big poetry fan."

"James Tate is the Jerry Seinfeld of American poetry."

Poet's guide to Cleveland.

War poets: From Homer to Pound and beyond.

Start lining up: Ted Hughes birthplace to open its doors tomorrow.

More Dylan Thomas movie news anyone?

In China, aftershocks and anthologies in the wake of the quake.

"I will always be Prince of Poets. I don't need to fight again."

Who's counting? CD Wright want to know.

Dickinson's hummingbirds.

Collecting Patti Smith: From Rimbaud to Iraq.

Esquare deal: Hear that honking? It's poetry to Steven Alvarez.

Susan Firer and Kevin Prufer: Mass appeal?

How to live: Edwin Morgan wins Sundial prize.

When Sonic Youth meets James Joyce.

Hair of the dog: Byron's trick.

Poet turned memoirist Sarah Manguso: illness and metaphor.

Joe Brainard does Nancy.

What's the "the greatest poem to emerge from World War II"?

Listening to poetry on Prozac.

"We want to see it": Gems from Buffalo's Poetry Collection.

Astronomy and the Odyssey.

Least compelling poetry contest ever?

Arc turns 30—and we're not talking about "advance review copies."

And while you're at it, don't be fooled by poetry contest scams.

Don't be afraid of poetry in translation.

India: President honors scavenger poet.

"I have beaten out my exile": Visiting Pound's home.

G.E. Murray, RIP: poet and PR man.

Leadership! "The Ruler of Dubai ordered the launch of Dubai International Poetry Festival. . . ."

Was the late Tim Russert a poet of sorts?

The conversions: Abrupt. Melville. "The Apparition." Discuss.

"Tinker to Evers to Chance": Play—or pen?—ball! (Read our piece on poetry and baseball.)

Who's the Chinese Shakespeare?

Native son: T.S. Eliot's "basic urban imagery" came from St. Louis.

Cy Twombly: a painting in a day, crammed with poetry.

Mersey Sound-man Roger McGough.

Elizabeth Bartlett: a "weird cross between Anne Sexton and Philip Larkin."

Mary Jo Salter wonders, "Why do I check weather.com's ten-day forecast many times a day?"

All poetry, all the time: Seattle's Open Books store.

Even a bird-brain could read Stalin's verse.

Edward Thomas: genre marker, maker of inescapable blueprints.

Mahmoud Darwish wins International Park Award, which has nothing to do with landscaping.

What makes Neil Rollinson laugh out loud?

Surreal estate: Simic, Lux, and Tate.

Acrostics, part 2: The beauty of constraints.

Mystery dance: Germaine Greer disses Dylan's lyrics.

You've written one of the best poems in your life. Now what?

Selima Hill: trout fishing in England?

The Village scene, c. 1959: "The poetry reading? I didn't see you . . . I wasn't going myself, you know."

Illness and metaphor: Mark Perlberg began writing poetry while sick.

Dangerous acrostics: Rangoon paper editor fired over poem.

"We are confident he can do better": Adam Kirsch on John Keats.

Frank O'Hara: Roomed with Gorey and Ashbery, gave Richard Howard good reading material.

What's up, doc?: Billy Collins channels Bugs.

The Oppen variation: "Poets are the legislators of the unacknowledged world."