“The Exile’s Return” by Robert Lowell
“The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.” - Robert Lowell… Read More
“Chansons Innocentes: I” by by e.e. cummings
"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." - e. e. cummings… Read More
“Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen
"The very content of Owen's poems was, and still is, pertinent to the feelings of young men facing death and the terrors of war." — The New York Times Book Review… Read More
“Dead Man’s Dump” by Isaac Rosenberg
In The Great War and Modern Memory, an indispensible examination of First World War literature, Paul Fussell declares Rosenberg's Break of Day in the Trenches "the greatest poem of the war."… Read More
“The Sunlight on the Garden” by Louis MacNeice
One of the finest poems of the Auden generation. … Read More
“Ballade at Thirty-five” by Dorothy Parker
"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to." - Dorothy Parker… Read More
“Song to a Fair Young Lady, Going Out of the Town in the Spring” by John Dryden
"Ask not the cause why sullen Spring / So long delays her flowers to bear"… Read More
“Advice” by Ernest Hilbert in the New Issue of Think Journal
Check out the new issue of Think Journal, its first perfect-bound edition, including new poetry from David Yezzi, Jill Alexander Essbaum, Deborah Warren, Ashley Anna McHugh, and many others (such as Rilke… Read More
“The Mediterranean” by Allen Tate
"A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never… Read More
“Lazy” by David Yezzi
David Yezzi's books of poetry are The Hidden Model (TriQuarterly) and Azores (Swallow Press), a Slate magazine best book of the year. His poems have appeared recently in Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly,… Read More
“Geological Time” by Nora Delaney
Nora Delaney is a poet and Dutch-English translator based in Boston. Her work has been published in Fulcrum, Little Star, Literary Imagination, Critical Flame, and elsewhere.… Read More
“Night Writing” by John McCullough, from his debut collection The Frost Fairs
“John McCullough is a poet for whom language is a flexible gift. He can be formal and controlled, colloquial and intimate, sensuous and saucy. He enjoys risk-taking in his work, forging unusual… Read More
“Sad Little Breathing Machine” by Matthea Harvey
Matthea Harvey is the author of Sad Little Breathing Machine (Graywolf, 2004) and Pity the Bathtub Its Forced Embrace of the Human Form (Alice James Books, 2000). Her third book of poems,… Read More
“Approaching a Significant Birthday, He Peruses The Norton Anthology of Poetry” by R.S. Gwynn
R.S. Gwynn has received the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, served as an original faculty member of the West Chester University Conference on… Read More
“Soprano’s Lament” by Ernest Hilbert
"The Raintown Review is a perfect-bound, semi-annual journal. We have published the works of William Baer, Jared Carter, Annie Finch, Richard Moore, Daniel Hoffman, Molly Peacock, Jennifer Reeser, A.E. Stallings, X.J. Kennedy… Read More
“Of Empires” by Ernest Hilbert
"[Sixty Sonnets] delivers the full range of human types and stories, and nearly the whole breadth of what the sonnet can do. . . . We might see Hilbert as being God… Read More
“Alternative Rock Song” by Quincy Lehr
Quincy R. Lehr was raised in Norman, Oklahoma and presently lives in Brooklyn, having returned to the U.S. after two years in Ireland. His work has appeared in print and online venues… Read More
“I taste a liquor never brewed” (214) by Emily Dickinson
"Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, on December 10, 1830 and died there on May 15, 1886. She left behind, in manuscript, nearly 1800 poems, mostly untitled lyrics and brief allegorical… Read More
“Waking Early Sunday Morning” by Robert Lowell
“Waking Early Sunday Morning” is the first section in the long poem called “Near the Ocean.”… Read More
“Waiting for the Stray” by Ernest Hilbert
"Ernest Hilbert’s Sixty Sonnets is exactly what its title suggests—and thus it’s a performance as much as a book of poems, showy and spectacular. From the brisk noir of 'She Remembers How… Read More
“The Hive” by Jo Shapcott
Jo Shapcott was born in London in 1953. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing. She is… Read More
“On Realizing That I Have Never Used the Word Commerce in a Poem Until Now” by Anna Evans
Anna Evans is editor of The Raintown Review and a Contributing/Online Editor for the The Schuylkill Valley Journal. Her poems have appeared in journals including the Harvard Review, Rattle, the Atlanta Review,… Read More
“Alcove” by John Ashbery
"Ashbery’s conjuring mind is full of huge amounts of information—philology, movies, Old French, camp slang, archaeology, cartoons, the poetry of the ages, bibliography, Victoriana, television ads and more. Ashbery’s own mental inventory… Read More
“Why There is No Socialism in the United States of America” by Quincy Lehr
Quincy R. Lehr was raised in Norman, Oklahoma and presently lives in Brooklyn, having returned to the U.S. after two years in Ireland. His work has appeared in print and online venues… Read More
“Martini Shot” by Ernest Hilbert
"The Raintown Review is a perfect-bound, semi-annual journal. We have published the works of William Baer, Jared Carter, Annie Finch, Richard Moore, Daniel Hoffman, Molly Peacock, Jennifer Reeser, A.E. Stallings, X.J. Kennedy… Read More
“Repose of Rivers” by Hart Crane
"Crane's poetry has been a touchstone for me, and remains central to a fully imaginative understanding of American literature." - Harold Bloom… Read More
“City on a Hill” by Ernest Hilbert
Ernest Hilbert’s newest collection, All of You on the Good Earth (2013), continues to explore the bizarre worlds of 21st-century America first glimpsed in his debut, Sixty Sonnets, which X.J. Kennedy hailed… Read More
“Bright Star” by John Keats
When Keats died at the age of 25, he had been seriously writing poetry for barely six years, from 1814 until the summer of 1820, and publishing for four. It is believed… Read More
“Simple Instructions” by Ernest Hilbert
Hilbert has written poems of superb lyricism. It’s hard to think of another poet with such range, and indeed with such brilliant delivery. Beauty, trash, exaltation, and humor are contained in his… Read More