“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
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
“How to Write the Great Jersey Poem” by Danny Shot
Danny Shot was a longtime publisher and editor of Long Shot arts and literary magazine, which he founded along with Eliot Katz in 1982 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. … 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
“To Eros” by Alfonsina Storni translated from the Spanish by Nicholas Friedman
Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) is an important Argentine and Latin-American modernist poet. Nicholas Friedman is the author of Petty Theft, which won the 2018 New Criterion Poetry Prize and will be published by… 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
Hear Afaa M. Weaver Interviewed by Ernest Hilbert Live at Fergie’s Pub
Ernest Hilbert interviewed poet, translator, and professor Afaa M. Weaver before a live audience at Fergie's Pub in Philadelphia on the afternoon of Sunday, November 19th, 2017. … 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
“Spirit Boxing” by Afaa M. Weaver
It is the tightness in the gut when the load is heavy enough to knock me over backward, turn me back on my heel until my ankle cracks and I holler out… 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
“Mars Ultor” by Ernest Hilbert
"Just as the work of the modernists showed that the best free verse usually has something masterfully formal about it, Hilbert’s fine collection might serve to remind us that the best formal… Read More
Afaa Michael Weaver Interviewed Live by Ernest Hilbert
Hey, Philly, I'll be interviewing award-winning poet Afaa Michael Weaver as part of the Moonstone Gold series at Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom Street. Further info appears below. Hope to see you there!… Read More