Poetry speaks, in part, the language of place—exterior, interior, and especially the intersection where the outer and inner come together, that vital third place that is evoked, sometimes subtly, in these poems, which focus on my journey from the woods to the city and from marriage to divorce and beyond.

Like the best of trips, Alexandra van de Kamp’s “Dear S—” exposes us to both the strange we find alluring and the strange we find disturbing, and by the end we are looking at the world in a slightly different way.

In this poem, we see a father’s strength and dignity lending a grace that, for the speaker, stands in counterpoint to the swift and terrible destruction of his disease.

I wrote this poem while thinking about the way that marriage is a form, not unlike a poem, which demands certain kinds of commitments (and identities) from us and in turn shapes us in response to our commitment to it.

So many events from the past reappear in a different light, and in that light how often my parenting was found wanting. Can any mother escape blame? We are fallen gods. — Meryl Natchez

My poems “Revision” and “Definitions” were both written out of a need to grapple with my experience of being trapped and defined by my female body—by the physical, biological, often excruciating facts of it—in a way that men are spared.

Marilyn Chin, who was born in Hong Kong and raised in Portland, Oregon, has spent a 30-year career fusing cultures, exploring how her ancestry meets her personal, political, and poetic life.

“Elegy with Civil War Shadowbox” is a meditation on the challenges of memorializing war.