Yeats and the Occult Imagination
Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.
Poetry’s Vital Role in Politics
Like Walt Whitman before them, Joy Harjo and Amanda Gorman are reimagining what it means to be a poet in this democratic republic.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Merry Christmas from The World
Festive poems from Anne Waldman, Bernadette Mayer, Eileen Myles, Clark Coolidge, Alice Notley, Yuki Hartman, Wang Ping, and more.