“In a poem, we feel what is there, but also what is not.”
poetry
Posted inEditor's Pick
What My Father’s Death Taught Me about Poetry
Matthew Zapruder examines his relationship with poetry and with his father. Despite being two men with great facility for precise language, they were unable to use it to bridge the distance between them. In likening poems to people, Zapruder posits that the most beautiful thing about the poems most important to him is that their […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Poems: Protection From Isolation and Solitary Confinement
What we all need now? Poetry, sweet poetry.
Posted inEditor's Pick
My Hundred
Beth Ann Fennelly suggests that to fully embrace the beauty of poetry, one must memorize it. Once committed to memory — a process that gets easier with practice — a poem forever becomes prophylactic against stressful days and lonely times: “We’ve all known solitary confinement. We’ve all inhabited isolation rooms. But the poems we know […]
Posted inBlog Post, Reading List
Tracy K. Smith, Poet Laureate for a Nation Divided
The Librarian of Congress hailed Smith as a “poet of searching.”
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quotes, Writing
At McSorley’s: Unsorted Regulars, Misfits, Liars, Heroes, and Psychos
Rafe Bartholomew discovers his father’s voice in the very place he thought was holding him back, McSorley’s Old Ale House
Posted inEditor's Pick
The McSorley Poet
Rafe Bartholomew tells the story of his father — Geoffrey Bartholomew — who felt that his addiction to alcohol and his bartending job at famed McSorley’s in New York City had prevented him from achieving the dream of becoming a writer. Bartholomew quit the booze, but not the bar and wrote a self-published manuscript of […]
Posted inArts & Culture, Current Events, Nonfiction, Quotes, Uncategorized
Poets Talk to Poets about the Border Wall
In this roundtable, poets from around this world discuss the role borders play in their lives.
Posted inArts & Culture, Quotes, Writing
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: The Siberian Cowboy Poet
“It makes sense that a person would come from another culture and do their poems, because everybody at Elko thinks they’re from another culture.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Quote Posts
The Roots of Cowboy Music: ‘This Is the Music We Made. This Is the Land We Made.’
Oakland writer Carvell Wallace travels to Elko, Nevada, for the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and reflects on what it means to be black and American.