Chess, Unlike War, is a Game of Perfect Information
The late poet Charles Simic was a chess prodigy who used the queen and her court to conjure a hellscape that invoked a childhood in war-time Belgrade.
Lost in Translation: Ezra Pound’s Imagism and the Angel Island Poets
As Pound was making a splash with “translations” of Chinese poetry, immigrants from China were etching poems of despair into the walls of a detention facility.
Remembering Her Memories: Lucille Clifton’s Generations in Our Time
The poet stares history down in an artful, Whitman-infused exploration of traumas her family endured and survived.
The Devonshire Manuscript
The sixteenth-century handwritten collection of poetry and commentary offers a glimpse of intellectual life at the court of King Henry VIII.
Strange, Inglorious, Humble Things
Dorothea and Gladys Cromwell fled the constrictions of high society for the freedoms of the literary world. Ravenous for greater purpose, the twins then went to war.
The Poetry Contest Edna St. Vincent Millay Lost
Though her writing career opened in an inauspicious manner, Edna St. Vincent Millay became the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
Remembering Gwendolyn MacEwen
The Canadian poet was inspired by everything from Ancient Egyptian mythology to folk magic, from Gnosticism to global politics.
Mary Sidney and the Voice of God
Philip Sidney’s attempt at translating the Psalms ended with his early death. Then, his sister took up the cause—and proved herself the superior poet.
T. S. Eliot and the Holy Grail
The Nobel Laureate drew on a centuries-old legend when he put the Fisher King in The Waste Land.
The New York School Poets
From Bernadette Mayer to Joan Mitchell. Tracing the path from the New York School poets to their painter friends.