“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
“Meeting Point” by Louis MacNeice
"Poetry in my opinion must be honest before anything else and I refuse to be 'objective' or clear-cut at the cost of honesty." - Louis MacNeice… Read More
Works Cited: A New Poetry Podcast
It's a gritty, downright underground project right now, and I hope it catches on. I'm told they have the entire first season recorded, so we have much more to look forward to.… Read More
Ernest Hilbert’s Poem “Haunts” on NPR’s Morning Edition
A recording of my poem “Haunts” aired on WHYY FM, Philadelphia’s NPR Station, 90.9 MHz, as part of a National Poetry Month feature on Morning Edition, hosted by Jennifer Lynn. It's a… 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
Ernest Hilbert Writes about Books in the Wall Street Journal
I had a chance to review three new books about books for the Spring books insert at the Wall Street Journal. Check it out.… 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
“Summer Elegy” by David Livewell
David Livewell grew up in Philadelphia and won the 2012 T.S. Eliot Award for Poetry for Shackamaxon (Truman State University Press). He is now at work on a second collection.… Read More
AoYotGE for National Poetry Month at the Cambridge Public Library
I was pleased to learn that my books were on display at the Cambridge Public Library in Massachusetts for National Poetry Month. I asked librarian Daniel Wuenschel to send a photograph, but by… Read More
“Celle Qui Fut Heaulmiette” by Wallace Stevens
“After the reader has admired certain lines because Shakespeare might have written them, he begins to admire them because only Stevens could.” - Robert Fitzgerald … 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
“After Glynn Williams’ The Flowering of the English Baroque” by James Brookes
James Brookes was born in 1986 and grew up in Sussex. He received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2009, and his pamphlet The English Sweats was published… 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
Ernest Hilbert Reviews Daniel Kalder’s The Infernal Library for the Washington Post
Of all the genres one might imagine, dictator literature, books written by or on behalf of despots, must be among the most curious and troubling. I review Daniel Kalder's book The Infernal Library:… Read More
“Scenes from a Storm: Valentine’s Day, 2018” by Olga Dugan
Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Her award-winning poems appear or are forthcoming in Virga, The Sunlight Press, Origins, The Peacock Journal, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Kweli, The Southern Quarterly, The Red… Read More
Hear and Watch Ernest Hilbert’s “Nights of 1998” Set to Music by Christopher LaRosa
You can now hear and watch "Nights of 1998" on a live stream here by clicking on "New Music Ensemble, David Dzubay director."… 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
“Science Fiction” by Kingsley Amis
"He is an intelligent poet and critic, an effective journalist and a straightforward, honest writer of fiction which is both entertaining and firmly committed to traditional moral values.” - R.G.G. Price… Read More
B-List Trump Facts from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury
A few months ago, the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, an expose of the Trump White House behind the scenes, got a lot of publicity. A few key dishy points… 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
Ernest Hilbert Reviews John Y. Cole’s New History of the Library of Congress in the Washington Post
My review of a new history of the Library of Congress appears in today's Sunday Washington Post. Check it out. I notice they altered my bio slightly to make me a "dealer… Read More
“What’s Left of Apollo” by Jan Schreiber, adapted from R. M. Rilke
Jan Schreiber was born in 1941 and grew up in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. He received his BA at Stanford University, his MA at the University of Toronto, and his PhD in English… 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
Monday Poets at the Free Library Featuring Catherine Staples and Ernest Hilbert
Parkway Central Library, 1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103… 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