Anna Yin: “The Path”
“The Path” may appear simple, but its ending moves me, every time. Fairy tale, love poem, ars poetica—“The Path” is all of these and more.
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Articles onPoetry
Janée J. Baugher: “Public Sale, 1943”
and mini-review of The Ekphrastic Writer
Learning how to read art by way of “deep-looking” can lead to a more creative way of seeing that could be applied to a number of other areas of human endeavor, and maybe, even to a way of life.
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Florencia Milito:
“Villanelle for Henry Darger/Oda a Henry Darger”
Florencia Milito’s poem paints a sympathetic portrait of the complicated artist and his work as “a celestial housekeeper” whose mission was “to pleat the folds of sky” and “stitch its gems,” in lines that communicate tenderness and awe.
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Susan E. Gunter: “Sestina for Esther”
You could call this poem an elegy to a lost mother, but I read it more universally as an elegy to the lost kingdom of childhood.
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Three Erasure Poems from Sarah J. Sloat’s
‘Hotel Almighty’
The careful balance S.J. Sloat strikes between elements of erasure and visual art in each poem reveals new depths upon multiple readings. The compressed lyrics sing of introspection and offer wisdom, and they are richly enhanced by the inspired variety and ingenuity of erasure modalities and concrete imagery.
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Yona Harvey: You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love
Yona Harvey’s 'You Don’t Have to Go to Mars for Love' is an astounding book that reminds us that we don’t have to undertake extraordinary measures for love or realization.
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Mahogany Browne: “When Fanny Lou Hamer said”
"When Fanny Lou Hamer said” champions the assertion of the most basic human and civil rights through means sanctioned by our Constitution: peaceful assembly and protest, voting, running for office, and the everyday radical acts of poetry, hope, and prayer.
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Aracelis Girmay: “You Are Who I Love”
Today’s is a love poem for everyone and a model for how to love expansively and wholly. It embraces us and loves us for who we are and what we do, and its range allows each of us to feel seen and recognized.
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Amanda Gorman: “The Hill We Climb”
“The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman is an example of an occasional poem that exceeded itself by happening to be the perfect message at the perfect time and place, delivered by the perfect messenger.
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Barbara Crooker:
“Poem with an Embedded Line by Susan Cohen”
It will help, the poem seems to suggest, if we focus on family and the world of nature rather than the world of the human. Some aspects of that world are just too unbearable right now for a sustained gaze.
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Tara Betts: “What Bucks or Breaks”
Today’s featured poem, “What Bucks or Breaks” by Tara Betts, is a wonderful example of how a poem’s structure can enhance its meaning.
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Marvin Bell Tribute
I wrote this poem to be included in a tribute volume for Marvin Bell, who died last month at 83. “Dead Woman Poem for Marvin Bell” honors him as an exceptional teacher of poetry and also purloins his invented form—what he called his Dead Man poems. —Susan Cohen
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Chloe Martinez: “In Delhi”
The poem is a love song both to my husband and to a city that I find endlessly fascinating and frustrating, and that I miss, especially in this travel-free year. —Chloe Martinez
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Naomi Shihab Nye: “Snow”
Because this poem invites us to read it as metaphor, it was a short leap to consider the poem’s application to our country’s current political crisis, neither side really talking to the other, grievances swamping us like a ‘snowpocalypse.’
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Emily Dickinson: Winter Poems
Another source of solace has been poetry; reading, studying, and writing it has been the heartbeat of my days. With that in mind, this week’s column will present some poetry for you: a selection of winter poems by Emily Dickinson
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