Truth be Told: On Natasha Trethewey
/Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway mines American history--the early colonies, slavery, the Civil War--for the material of her poetry. Teow Lim Goh visits with the figures she's brought back to life.
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Poet Laureate Natasha Tretheway mines American history--the early colonies, slavery, the Civil War--for the material of her poetry. Teow Lim Goh visits with the figures she's brought back to life.
Read MoreKathleen Rooney's poems in Robinson Alone can be read two ways--as standalone pieces and as connected parts that form a single poetic narrative of a character's life
Read MoreIn sparse and contrapuntal verse, familiar words are warped out of their comfortable meanings, and sharpened to juxtapose - but is Joyelle McSweeney's latest experiment a success?
Read MoreSufi mystics, barbaric yawps, and the comedy of the sexes are what's inside Anthony Madrid's new collection of ghazals. What does our poetry editor make of this puzzling Persian pattern?
Read MoreEmily Pettit turns nonsense into horse sense, or goat sense, in her new collection Goat in the Snow
Read MoreMyth and fairy tale seem as far from true as can be, but Feng Sun Chen's poetry uses them to explore the necessities and unavoidable transformations of life.
Read MoreMatvei Yankelevich's poetry may seem direct and plainspoken, but as a new collection shows, his verse reveals a long battle with the uncertainty of language.
Read MoreThe great Antonio Machado loved his native Spain and was disgusted by its descent into fascism; that fusion of enchantment and grief vivifies his unforgettable poetry.
Read MoreThe verses of the neglected poet James Schuyler seem to ramble, but they don't really ramble; they seem dishevelled, but they aren't; they seem miniaturist, but they contain whole worlds. Stephen Akey makes the case for your renewed attention.
Read MoreKnown as much for how she exited her life as for the poetry she wrote during it, Sylvia Plath remains a polarizing figure in the world of verse. What are we reading, when we subject ourselves to her poems?
Read MoreHow should we relate to our cities? To ourselves? Kate Schapira couldn't be asking more important questions in her latest collections of poems, How We Saved The City, and The Bounty: Four Addresses
Read MoreNobody would accuse the mature Larkin of being a greeting card poet, and yet a warm and even vulnerable sentimentality bubbles up in his verse, often when it's least expected.
Read MoreThe late Akilah Oliver's poetry uses language to escape the trap of consciousness--verse "as rapture, as rupture" alike
Read MoreBetween the abstract and the solid, between Michigan and New York City, in and out of love, Gina Myers brings betweeness to the fore in her first collection of poems
Read MoreCourtier and cleric, adventurer and ascetic, man of faith and man of the world — John Donne was many things in his life, and a sprawling new Companion does its best to assess them all.
Read MoreIn her new collection of poems, Claire Becker probes the matter between what we intuit and what we learn, between what we choose and how we change.
Read MoreIn his latest collection, The Wrecking Light, Robin Robertson blends the voices of generations of Scottish/Celtic bards and balladeers into his own unique style of poetry.
Read MoreHave bickering bloggers and academic jargon so infected the poetry world that readers can no longer read a poem, or speak of one, as what it is?
Read MoreShin Yu Pai engages with history, tradition, and the world around her in her new collection of poems.
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