Gretchen Marquette has written several poems about the complicated feelings she has about her brother fighting in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
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.
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.
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.
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."…
Poet Teow Lim Goh imagines the voices of Chinese immigrants who were detained at Angel Island between 1910 and 1940.
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.
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…
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…
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.
