Photographs of Natasha Trethewey, Debora Kuan, Sam Sax, Louise Glück, Rebecca Lehmann, and Alex Dimitrov against a green background

10 Contemporary Pastoral Poems

Poems that reflect and reinterpret the pastoral tradition, by Louise Glück, Alex Dimitrov, Rebecca Lehmann, Sam Sax, Natasha Trethewey, and more.
Rebecca Lehmann

Rebecca Lehmann on Breaking the Rules of Poetry

An interview with writer and poet Rebecca Lehmann, who finds splendid things can follow when she stretches the rules of craft.
Clockwise: Agha Shahid Ali, Elizabeth Bishop, William Logan, Paisley Rekdal, Charles Fort, Tim Seibles.

10 Villanelles by Modern and Contemporary Poets

Read these recursive, nineteen-line poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Paisley Rekdal, William Logan, Agha Shahid Ali, and more.
Ken Bundy from Bridgeport Ct. who served in Vietnam for 2 years touchs the Vietnam Memorial, November 11, 2003 in Washington, DC.

What Veterans’ Poems Can Teach Us About Healing on Memorial Day

A scholar and military veteran proposes that poems written by veterans that focus on honoring those who have died in service can help heal an ailing nation.
Frank O'Hara

12 Poems by Frank O’Hara

Plus his manifesto on Personism and writings about O’Hara by Ted Berrigan, Joseph LeSueur, and Joe Brainard.

10 Sestinas by Modern and Contemporary Poets

The sestina form features the repetition of end words across stanzas. Here are sestinas by Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Bishop, Patricia Smith, and more.
Poet Johnathan McClain reads his poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club December 6, 2002 in New York City.

The Legacy and Power of Performance Poetry: A Reading List

MTV might take credit for getting spoken word on the pop cultural radar, but it’s a tradition that spans millennia and continents.
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.