This New Year’s poem honors ‘the wrong roads we’ve taken’
Jimmy Santiago Baca wrote the collection, “Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande” in 2004 after living on the banks of that river. Every morning, he ran through snow, rain and mud in a ritual that he called a spiritual experience.
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Why this poet couldn’t avoid writing about the opioid crisis
The opioid crisis has plagued poet William Brewer’s hometown in West Virginia. His vivid poems tell the story of the opioid epidemic from different voices and depict the sense of bewilderment people find themselves in as addiction creeps into their…
Mapping Seattle, poem by poem
Seattle's "Poetic Grid" captures the rapidly changing city by asking people to write about locations that have meaning to them.
This poet’s obsession with death led her to write about how to live
Nicole Sealey's new poetry collection asks us if, like the Greek figure of Sisyphus, we can find contentment even when life is difficult and absurd…
Fifty years ago this month, a protest in Detroit turned into a riot, which turned into five days of violence that left dozens dead, thousands arrested and a city engulfed in flames. The poem "They Feed They Lion" chronicles the…
Last week, the Library of Congress selected Tracy K. Smith as the new U.S. Poet Laureate. Here, Smith shares the poetry she recommends reading right now.
Leading contemporary poet and Dickinson scholar Susan Howe breaks down "There's a certain Slant of light," one of Emily Dickinson's most-beloved poems.
On Sunday, writers and artists rallied across the country in defense of freedom of speech and to protest the political discourse of President-elect Donald Trump. The Writers Resist events took place in Tuscaloosa, Fresno, Helena Denver, Chicago, Baltimore,and Washington D.C.,…
“[This poem] looks at the emptiness of American Exceptionalism and concepts of our ‘greatness’ but by talking about the name Jennifer… a quintessentially American name,” said Adair-Hodges, who said the poem came out of “thinking about names as signifiers” --…
