Poetry

What baseball is, according to this lifetime fan

By Mary Jo Brooks

Gail Mazur says she’s been obsessed with baseball her whole life, but she resisted the temptation to write any poems about the game because she worried how it would be received by other poets.

This poet releases the beasts to discover her humanity

By Mary Jo Brooks

Werewolves, mermaids, griffons and minotaurs: Donika Kelly’s debut collection of poetry is filled with mythological creatures. But unlike medieval bestiaries that used creatures to teach moral lessons to others, Kelly says her book is an exploration of her humanity.

How this son of immigrants reimagined his parents’ homeland

By Mary Jo Brooks

Chris Santiago is the son of Filipino immigrants. In his first collection of poems, “Tula,” he wrestles with the tension of being both inside and outside the language and the culture of the Philippines.

When a hurricane turns a familiar place into ‘familiar debris’

By Mary Jo Brooks

Alison Pelegrin, a poet and native of New Orleans, has lived through many hurricanes, but says Katrina forever changed her. "I wear the scars, but I’m able to go on."…

If the walls of an immigrant detention center could speak

By Mary Jo Brooks

Poet Teow Lim Goh imagines the voices of Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island between 1910 and 1940.

Seeing a culture of fear, poet explores the immigrant dream

By Mary Jo Brooks

Poet Tishani Doshi has long reflected on the idea of immigration and creating a new home in new land. But she has become alarmed about the “culture of fear” that has developed toward immigrants in the United Sates and Britain.

A Defense Department dictionary helped this poet write in the language of war

By Mary Jo Brooks

Solmaz Sharif says she has always been obsessed with state-sponsored language. But it wasn’t until 10 years ago when she stumbled onto a Defense Department dictionary that she began to write what would become an entire book of poetry using…

What it was like to watch the 9/11 attacks from your classroom window

By Mary Jo Brooks

On Sept. 11, 2001, Annie Thoms was 25 and just starting her second year teaching English at Stuyvesant High School, which is located just four blocks from Ground Zero. In the months that followed, she worked with her students to…

A poet’s ode to the meaning of work

By Mary Jo Brooks

Philip Levine wrote 20 collections of verse, won a Pulitzer Prize and served as Poet Laureate of the United States. Yet he always considered his main mission was to document and honor the lives of working-class people.