“This Amber Sunstream” by Mark Van Doren
"I have loved Mark Van Doren's poetry all my life, or for thirty years. He was the first modern poet I seriously read, and I have never recovered, or tried to recover."… Read More
“Visiting Day” by Rhina P. Espaillat
“To Rhina Espaillat the quotidian is no malady . . . it is the source of inspiration. Hers is a voice of experience, but it is neither jaded nor pedantic. She speaks… Read More
“Kill Poem” by Frederick Seidel
"He radiates heat. It is apparent that he has asked himself frightful questions and has not dodged the implications of their equally frightful answers" - Louise Bogan… Read More
“God the Eater” by Stevie Smith
"On gray days when most modern poetry seems one dull colorless voice speaking through a hundred rival styles, one turns to Stevie Smith and enjoys her unique and cheerfully gruesome voice. She… Read More
“Mag” by Carl Sandburg
"Sandburg continually touches us by his power to be aware of fugitive circumstances that betray deep truth." - Mark Van Doren… Read More
“Resignation” by J.D. McClatchy
“There are very few poets writing today who, poem by poem, move me from admiration to admiration, and always with renewed and novel delight. There is no poet writing whose intelligence, dexterity,… Read More
“In Praise of Diversity” by Phyllis McGinley
"I start a sentence : 'The poetry of Phyllis McGinley is...,' and there I stick, for all I wish to say is '...is the poetry of Phyllis McGinley'" - W.H. Auden … Read More
“Easter Communion” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
"Closer to Dylan Thomas than Matthew Arnold in his ‘creative violence’ and insistence on the sound of poetry, Gerard Manley Hopkins was no staid, conventional Victorian. His verse is wrought from the… Read More
“The Donkey” by G.K. Chesterton
"In his obituary, T. S. Eliot alluded to GKC’s capacity for 'first-rate journalistic balladry,' and this high praise I think almost insufficient, because it understates his magic faculty of being unforgettable." -… Read More
“Ring The Bells Backward: Give Up The Gun” by Ray Bradbury
"The poems in I Live By The Invisible: New & Selected Poems from the unquenchable Bradbury all have his evergreen touch- accessible, humorous, quietly emotional... Bradbury fans, Hibernophiles, general readers, even some… Read More
“Glengormley” by Derek Mahon
Derek Mahon, a giant in Irish poetry, has died at the age of 78. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and was part of an extraordinary generation of Northern Irish poets… Read More
“The Aphrodisiac” by Medbh McGuckian
"Her language is like the inner lining of consciousness, the inner lining of English itself, and it moves amphibiously between the dreamlife and her actual domestic and historical experience as a woman… Read More
“The Woman Turns Herself into a Fish” by Eavan Boland
"Boland pursues an important, feminist revision of the history-making so often praised or inherited by MacNeice and Heaney. Not so much outside of history as counter to it, or in the process… Read More
“Peace” by Michael Longley
"Longley is not only a lyric poet of the first rank, but a clear-sighted observer who knows the real world when he sees it, even as he knows that it cannot be… Read More
“Heart to Heart” by Rita Dove
"Ms. Dove’s poems have earthiness, originality, power and range. Despair and loss are among her central themes, but so is the hunt for bedrock human pleasures.” - Dwight Garner, New York Times… Read More
“Literacy” by X.J. Kennedy
"A worthy heir... to the indispensably impertinent likes of Catullus amd Dean Swift―cheerfully serving notice that there's still nothing like an artfully pithy piece of verse for making short work of killjoys."… Read More
“The Pool” by Helen Pinkerton
“A master of poetic style and of her material. No poet in English writes with more authority.” - Yvor Winters … Read More
“Honeymoon Palsy” by Juliana Gray
Juliana Gray is the author of Honeymoon Palsy (Measure Press, 2017), Roleplay (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the 2010 Orphic Prize, and The Man Under My Skin (River City Publishing, 2005),… Read More
“Not They Who Soar” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
"We reclaim, in Paul Laurence Dunbar, a significant American author whose career transcends race and locality even while he makes use of racialized and regional cultural materials to create an African-American… Read More
Luke’s Favorite Music of 2017
Associate Poetry Editor Luke Stromberg brings you his favorite music of 2017. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, we have also included a Spotify playlist of his favorite… Read More
“Don’t Tell Me There’s No Hope” by Dick Allen
Dick Allen was the author of several poetry collections, including Zen Master Poems, This Shadowy Place, Present Vanishing, The Day Before, and Ode to the Cold War: Poems New and Selected. He… Read More
“Trance” by Paul Muldoon
"Muldoon's is a poetry which sees into things, and speaks of the world in terms of its own internal designs and patterns." - Roger Conover… Read More
“Villonaud for this Yule” by Ezra Pound
"Ezra Pound is the poet who, a thousand times more than any other man, has made modern poetry possible in English." - Donald Hall… Read More
“Fall on your Knees” by Kevin Cutrer
Kevin Cutrer’s first collection of poems, Lord’s Own Anointed, was published by Dos Madres Press in 2015. More recent work has appeared in Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel, and is forthcoming… Read More
“Migratory Patterns” by Luke Bauerlein
Luke Bauerlein's poems and essays have previously appeared in the NY Times, Rattle, BODY, Unsplendid, and elsewhere. He currently resides in Phoenixville PA and writes songs and performs with the band, The… Read More
Three Poems by Susan Delaney Spear
Susan Delaney Spear, poet and librettist, holds an MFA in poetry with an emphasis in verse-craft from Western State Colorado University. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Colorado Christian University in… Read More
“Poetry” by Michael Collins
Michael Collins is the author of The Traveling Queen: Selected Poems of Michael Collins (Sheep Meadow Press 2013) and Understanding Etheridge Knight (University of South Carolina Press 2012). He has published poems,… Read More
“A Thanksgiving to God, for his House” by Robert Herrick
"One of the most accomplished nondramatic poets of his age." - The Poetry Foundation… Read More
“Childlessness” by Amy Gerstler
Amy Gerstler is a writer of poetry, nonfiction and journalism. Her books include Scattered at Sea (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Dearest Creature (2009); Ghost Girl (2004);… Read More
“First Ghost” by Juliana Gray
Juliana Gray is the author of Honeymoon Palsy (Measure Press, 2017), Roleplay (Dream Horse Press, 2012), which won the 2010 Orphic Prize, and The Man Under My Skin (River City Publishing, 2005),… Read More