Poetry

America’s poet laureate shares a poem for you to take to the polls

By Jennifer Hijazi

A new poetry collection invites readers to explore the diversity of American experiences in a different light.

These wicked Day of the Dead poems don’t spare anyone

By Lora Strum, Patty Gorena Morales

A proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico is the product of “the underworld” in one calavera literaria written for the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos.

A journalist’s death by a repressive government, remembered in verse

By Lora Strum

Marie Colvin "was killed in an attempt to silence her and others reporting from that place,” poet and friend Alan Jenkins said.

Poet Phil Kaye remembers his grandfather and reimagines traditional masculinity

By Steve Goldbloom

Phil Kaye is a Japanese-American poet and filmmaker and co-director of “Project Voice,” an organization that partners with schools to bring poetry into the classroom. He shares one of his poems, “Surplus,” for a brief but spectacular take on his…

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In the wake of Hurricane Michael, this poet recognizes the way disaster can change you

By Lora Strum

Poet Heather Jacobsen can't forget how a hurricane shattered her neighborhood. Those indelible memories appear in her work "City Turned to Inland Lake."…

A poet explains why ‘boys will be boys’ is the ‘stupidest’ thing you could say

By Lora Strum

A young boy pushes a girl off a swing because he likes her. “Boys will be boys,” a teacher explains. Years later, a boy drinks a bit too much and hits his girlfriend. The same words echo in the girl’s…

For this poet, community, hair and self-worth are interwoven

By Corinne Segal

Raych Jackson spent countless nights of her childhood sitting on Chicago porches with her friends' hands in her hair -- feeling the intimacy of touch and the pain as they pulled tight, hearing the sounds of gossip flying around her.

Aug 29

Remembering Tom Clark, renowned poet who rhapsodized about baseball

By Jennifer Hijazi

Prolific poet and biographer Tom Clark died this month at the age of 77, leaving behind a substantial body of writing that exemplifies his penchants for lyricism, wit, and brevity, as well as a lifelong love of baseball.

A poet grows up in the post-Columbine world

By Jennifer Hijazi

Kelly Forsythe's latest collection “Perennial” imagines a different kind of narrative in the wake of the Columbine High School shooting -- a “coming-of-age” story about what it means when feeling safe has drastically changed.

‘The human capacity to carry many things at once’

By Jennifer Hijazi

For poet Ada Limón, carrying both the joys and sorrows of a child-free life is a testament to the human ability to exist with many things piled on our shoulders at once.