From the cover of Issue 9 of The World, December 1967

Merry Christmas from The World

Festive poems from Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, Eileen Myles, Clark Coolidge, Alice Notley, Yuki Hartman, Wang Ping, and more.
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ca 1864-70.

Becoming Beatrice

Dante adored her so much that he cast her as his guide in the Divine Comedy. But who was Beatrice Portinari?
Surrealist artists at the first Surrealist Exhibition to be held in London. Back row, from left, are Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E LT Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes-Davies. Front row, from left, Diana Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and unknown.

Surrealism at 100: A Reading List

On the centennial of the founding of Surrealism, this reading list examines its radical beginnings, its mass popularity, and its continued evolution.
The cover of Dictee by Theresa Hak-Kyung Cha

A “Genre-Bending” Poetic Journey through Modern Korean History

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée is an experiment in both lyric and epic modernism that uses form to invoke the tragedy of the wartime partition of Korea.
Garrett Hongo

I Hear America Singing

Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.

A Garden of Verses

As commonplace books evolved into anthologies, they developed reputations as canonical works, their editors curating tomes as vibrant as the loveliest bouquets.
Art Nouveau image of a person looking at a book of poetry, 1898 Velhagen Monatsheft

Make Your Own Poetry Anthology

Teaching students to make their own poetry anthologies in the form of a commonplace book gives them insight into the power, and problems, of curation.
An illustration of Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare’s First Published Work

Celebrated for his plays, Shakespeare actually opened his writing career with a derivative poem.
José Garcia Villa

José Garcia Villa, an American Poet Ahead of His Time

While Villa’s otherness created an opening for his work in the US, American critics ultimately held both his modernism and his nationality against him.
John G. Neihardt

A Tale of Two Visionaries

What roiled the mind of Nebraska poet John Neihardt with whom Black Elk, the iconic Lakota holy man, shared his story?