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Articles in the Poetry Category

Artifice and Discipline
By Kathleen Rooney – Mar 2010 | One Comment
Artifice and Discipline

The personas and poetics of five new books by American women are examined in with an eye toward concealment and of revelation: Matthea Harvey, Katy Lederer, Brenda Shaugnessey, Robyn Schiff, and Karen Volkman.

Café Town
By Amy King – Mar 2010 | One Comment
Café Town

… I don’t mind the missing violin; /
I am sweetly imbibing a foreign /
fortitude: nothing terrible /
will happen this hour or the previous… /

In Shafer’s Shadow
By Jessica Breiman – Mar 2010 | 2 Comments
In Shafer’s Shadow

“My ideal poem would be able to be interpreted as both funny and sad and whatever else….” Shafer trailed off. “I think that’s a fairly accurate description of my work, and probably of myself too.”

His Homelands
By Ascanio Tedeschi – Mar 2010 | One Comment
His Homelands

He was a soldier, a lover, an exile, and a wanderer – he was Ugo Foscolo,and thanks to a new translation, readers will learn he was one thing more: a powerful poet.

Everywhere There’s Georgia
By Ed McFadden – Feb 2010 | One Comment
Everywhere There’s Georgia

“opium” Georgias, “hotwired” Georgias, and “mercury” Georgias, are cataloged and blasted in Andrew Zawacki’s new collection Petals of Zero / Petals of One. But who or what or where is Georgia’s eponym?

On the Fifth of November On the Fifth of November

“Whoever devotes himself to decency and to virtue /
he beguiles with deceptions, corrupting their temptingly innocent hearts….”

David R. Slavitt on Young John Milton David R. Slavitt on Young John Milton

Long before he wrote some of the most powerful poems in English, John Milton, as a brainy teenager, wrote verse in Latin. Celebrated translator David Slavitt tells us a little about them.

Real Fake Flowers
By Elisa Gabbert – Feb 2010 | 3 Comments
Real Fake Flowers

Karl Parker’s moves are more than merely clever: I-less one minute, present & friendly the next, he darts behind masks and speaks IN BOLD, as our contributing editor discovers in her review.

Solitude (I) Solitude (I)

a poem by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Robertson

A Celtic Mage’s Muses
By Marc Vincenz – Jan 2010 | One Comment
A Celtic Mage’s Muses

Marc Vincenz interviews Forward Prize-winning poet and translator Robin Robertson, whose newest collection, The Wrecking Light, will be published this year

Blast and Scatteration
By John Madera – Jan 2010 | 3 Comments
Blast and Scatteration

John Madera reviews Michael Leong’s e.s.p. and recounts the scramble of names, idioms, puns, and wild associations he finds in the poems

Second Glance: “Today belongs to few and tomorrow to no one”
By Ingrid Norton – Jan 2010 | One Comment
Second Glance: “Today belongs to few and tomorrow to no one”

As Ingrid Norton reports, the eerie and heartbroken poems of W.S. Merwin’s The Lice continue to resonate thirty years on: whispering, creeping, shaking.

Tales from Atlantis: The Arrested Artistry of Elinor Wylie Tales from Atlantis: The Arrested Artistry of Elinor Wylie

Elinor Wylie has not received the respect of posterity that she herself thought she deserved. John G. Rodwan, Jr. explores the reasons for that neglect, and the poetry that survives it.

Guillotined Guillotined

A poem by Kristen Marie Kostick

The Better Part of Me
By Steve Donoghue – Dec 2009 | No Comment
The Better Part of Me

When he was banished for life from Rome, Ovid was trying to alter his artistic forms with his Metamorphoses. Trace the transformations in Steve Donoghue’s final “Year with the Romans”

A Wanderer’s Tale
By Ryan J. Davidson – Dec 2009 | No Comment
A Wanderer’s Tale

George Shannon, Jr. found himself lost from the Lewis & Clark expedition not once but twice; Campbell McGrath locates the wanderer in Shannon; Ryan Davidson reviews the poem.

Mandarin Duck avec Sartre
By Ed McFadden – Nov 2009 | No Comment
Mandarin Duck avec Sartre

Exile, displacement, and polyglot discovery fill the verses of Fiona Sze-Lorrain; Edward McFadden journeys through Water the Moon.

Horace in the Afternoon
By Steve Donoghue – Nov 2009 | No Comment
Horace in the Afternoon

He was everybody’s friend, and his poetry breathes with life even today. He was Horace, and “A Year with the Romans” makes his acquaintance.

Surely I’m Convinced
By John Williams – Nov 2009 | No Comment
Surely I’m Convinced

a poem by John Williams

The Grace of Seduction
By Steve Donoghue – Oct 2009 | No Comment
The Grace of Seduction

Steve Donoghue’s “A Year with the Romans” continues with a look at the obscure Roman poet Persius – and the great new book about him.

2007
By William Coyle – Oct 2009 | No Comment
2007

You knew you were dead in my dream. You said drive me. The doctor. I’m so late. I said no there’s no more doctor you know that. I hugged …

Not Just Contemplating a Rock
By Marc Vincenz – Oct 2009 | No Comment
Not Just Contemplating a Rock

A native of Iowa, A. F. Moritz has just won Canada’s highest poetry prize. Marc Vincenz sits down with him in Iceland to talk about metaphor, identity, and location.

Tricky Shticks
By Maureen Thorson – Sep 2009 | No Comment
Tricky Shticks

Nixon, Bushes, and the War on Terror have been surprisingly good for poetry. Maureen Thorson releases her findings on National Anthem and Dick of the Dead.

Stem and Root
By John Cotter – Sep 2009 | No Comment
Stem and Root

From the forbidding North to the torrid South, the poetry debuts of Joshua Harmon and Farrah Field explore the geography of words. John Cotter gives centrality to locality.

from LA LA LA from LA LA LA

from LA LA LA, a poem by Sampson Starkweather

Prediction
By Mark Wallace – Aug 2009 | No Comment
Prediction

In the future, we’ll plan the future better.

In the future, you can just become your TV.

In the future, your sexual partners will meet all the qualities on your checklist.

And this anxiety you’re feeling now? In the future you won’t feel it.

The Cast Iron of the Years
By Tristan Tzara – Jul 2009 | No Comment
The Cast Iron of the Years

An excerpt from a poem by Tristan Tzara, translated by Heather Green

Miss Hamilton Disposes
By Steve Donoghue – Jul 2009 | No Comment
Miss Hamilton Disposes

Bryn Mawr’s deaconess Edith Hamilton and Catullus, the bard of Rome’s underbelly, would seem to have little in common. Steve Donoghue brokers a meeting in the latest “Year with the Romans.”

In Praise of Snobbery
By Bryn Haworth – Jul 2009 | No Comment
In Praise of Snobbery

Great Britain has finally made a woman poet laureate—and a lesbian no less. As Bryn Haworth reports, when she’s isn’t writing about the Royals, she’s plenty worthy of the honor. Since writing about the Royals is one of the job’s few requirements, what changes might we expect from the post?

A Fiction
By Shafer Hall – Jun 2009 | No Comment
A Fiction

“It takes one to know one,” she said,
and I had knowingly taken several of them,
so when it came time to talk to the cops,
I took the initiative to tell them
where to find Franco (God rest …

Ten Questions for Sarah Ruden
By Steve Donoghue – May 2009 | No Comment
Ten Questions for Sarah Ruden

Sarah Ruden, the latest and greatest translator of Vergil’s Aeneid, offers a funny and fascinating glimpse inside the classicist’s world in this Open Letters interview.

from Moving Day
By Maureen Thorson – May 2009 | No Comment
from Moving Day

new poetry from Maureen Thorson

Postal Worker? Poodle?
By John Cotter – May 2009 | No Comment
Postal Worker? Poodle?

Poet’s poet Lyn Hejinian has turned poet’s novelist in Lola, half of her new collection Saga/Circus. John Cotter circles its sagacity.

Second Glance: ‘Do Not, Future People, Bring Up a Child the Wrong Way’
By Sean Hughes – May 2009 | No Comment
Second Glance: ‘Do Not, Future People, Bring Up a Child the Wrong Way’

The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, was compiled in the early 19th century from a much older oral tradition—can it possibly have anything to teach the modern reader? Sean Hughes has some surprising answers.

Liminal
By Christine Herzer – Apr 2009 | No Comment
Liminal

new poetry from Christine Herzer

Guide
By Steve Donoghue – Apr 2009 | No Comment
Guide

Virgil’s Aeneid has been attracting translators for centuries, and Sarah Ruden’s rendering is notable in more ways than one. (She calls him Vergil, for one thing, but that’s just the start.) Steve Donoghue regards her efforts in the latest “A Year with the Romans.”

The Inner Voice
By Charles Jodoin – Mar 2009 | No Comment
The Inner Voice

A poem by Charles Jodoin

Excess
By Paul Violi – Feb 2009 | No Comment
Excess

a poem by Paul Violi

Jack Spicer on Mars
By Jared White – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Jack Spicer on Mars

When Jack Spicer was alive, his books could only be had in small editions, in and around the Bay area. Thanks to a new collection, My Vocabulary Did This to Me, that work has finally arrived. Jared White takes us deep into Spicer’s magical, reckless world.

3 poems by Max Jacob 3 poems by Max Jacob

translations by Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney

Finely Woven Webs
By Lianne Habinek – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Finely Woven Webs

Poetry meets anatomy when Lianne Habinek reads Donne, who, in “The Flea” and other poems, aimed to discover the seat of the soul

And a Tree
By Adam Golaski – Jan 2009 | No Comment
And a Tree

John Taggart’s most recent book, There Are Birds, might net him a wider audience, thanks to a personal touch in those trademark cadences. Adam Golaski guides us into Taggart’s songlike sonorities.

The Damage Collector
By John Cotter – Jan 2009 | No Comment
The Damage Collector

C.D. Wright collects her poems from scraps of overheard conversation, wandering memories, newspaper headlines. In his review of Rising, Falling, Hovering, John Cotter surveys the damage suspended in that scaffolding.

2 poems by Gaius Valerius Catullus
By Keith Newton – Jan 2009 | No Comment
2 poems by Gaius Valerius Catullus

I need, my sweet girl Ipsithilla,
your pleasures passing through my hands,
like honey dripping from the sun,
so call me to you for the long afternoon.

On Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill
By Steve Donoghue – Jan 2009 | No Comment
On Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill

Among the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates.

Like Life
By Elisa Gabbert – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Like Life

The lyric I and the lyric eye are in play and in question in Stephanie Young’s second book, Picture Palace. Elisa Gabbert illuminates its pitfalls and its charms.

Foutez-moi le paix!
By Gaston Frontenac – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Foutez-moi le paix!

It may be debatable whether the most maudit of all the poètes deserves the tribute, but Gaston Frontenac finds the nasty, beautiful Rimbaud well served by Edmund White’s new Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel

2 poems by Peretz Markish
By Amelia Glaser – Jan 2009 | No Comment
2 poems by Peretz Markish

2 poems by Peretz Markish
translated by Amelia Glaser

— — —

Hey, what do you deal in – sorrow?
What are you selling there – despair?
I’m a buyer and a dealer,
and I’m dealing and I’m wheeling
days and nights, …

Water Lily Mud
By Heather Green – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Water Lily Mud

Lorine Niedecker knew the literary life in New York, fell for Louis Zukofsky, published in Objectivist magazines, then returned to Wisconsin, where her poems continued growing spare, surreal, and deep. Heather Green reviews what the new collection Radical Varnacular adds to our understanding of her world.

Katrina Cries
By Sharon Fulton – Jan 2009 | No Comment
Katrina Cries

Sharon Fulton reviews Patricia Smith’s Blood Dazzler, a “resonant and devastating” examination of the Katrina disaster and the Bush administration’s failure to contain its fallout.

Determinism
By Michael Trocchia – Dec 2008 | No Comment
Determinism

new poetry from Michael Trocchia

The two airheads you meet in heaven
By Kate Schapira – Nov 2008 | No Comment
The two airheads you meet in heaven

a poem by Kate Schapira

Epilogue, Notes for an Eclogue
By Andrea Zanzotto – Oct 2008 | No Comment
Epilogue, Notes for an Eclogue

A poem by Andrea Zanzotto, translated by Wayne Chambliss

Surgeries
By Caren Beilin – Sep 2008 | No Comment
Surgeries

Will you switch coronaries with me?

Green 1.5
By Adam Golaski – Sep 2008 | No Comment
Green 1.5

Contributing Editor Adam Golaski gives us his most recent installment of his gorgeous and heart-racing translation of one of English’s oldest poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Being Che
By Matthew Klane – Aug 2008 | No Comment
Being Che

A poem by Matthew Klane

The Goldfish Variations
By Peter Jay Shippy – Jul 2008 | No Comment
The Goldfish Variations

a poem by Peter Jay Shippy

East Riding
By Jesse Ball – Jun 2008 | No Comment
East Riding

A poem by Jesse Ball

The Reappearance of All Things
By Chad Reynolds – Jun 2008 | No Comment
The Reappearance of All Things

In the second of two essays, Chad Reynolds adjudges that in The Presentable Art of Reading Absence Wright himself could have stood to evanesce a smidge of his own ego in the course of his “users guide to evanescence”

The Songs of Sing
By Derek Henderson – Jun 2008 | No Comment
The Songs of Sing

What defines an anthology? What are the limits of verse? Derek Henderson definitively answers these and thousands of other questions in his detailed and celebratory review of A Sing Economy.

Zoom
By John Cotter – Jun 2008 | No Comment
Zoom

There can be no more obvious target in the literary landscape for our poetry editor than a popularly selling book-length poem. With Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow has dared to write such a thing, and John Cotter has responded accordingly.

The Beauty of Failure
By Chad Reynolds – May 2008 | No Comment
The Beauty of Failure

In the first of two essays on Jay Wright’s new Dalkey Archive books, Chad Reynolds describes the work of an old poet not half ready to go under the earth and still coming to terms with what it means to live on the surface in Polynomials and Pollen.

Lunch with Herbert
By Clayton Eshleman – May 2008 | No Comment
Lunch with Herbert

A poem by Clayton Eshleman.

Green
By Adam Golaski – May 2008 | No Comment
Green

Open Letters continues its serialization of Adam Golaski’s innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this, the fourth installment.

Kleinzahleresque
By John Cotter – May 2008 | One Comment
Kleinzahleresque

August Kleinzahler is not an old man, yet Sleeping It Off in Rapid City is his fourth Selected Poems. John Cotter explores why you’ll need the old ones too and why you may find yourself with a use for the word “Kleinzahleresque.”

Absent Friends: Gentle Poet
By Steve Donoghue – May 2008 | No Comment
Absent Friends: Gentle Poet

At a poetry reading on the Palatine 2,000 years ago, you’d have spent a week’s pay to hear him read. Today he’s unknown, except to our Steve Donoghue (and a few of our readers, no doubt). Here, after a long time gone, is the Roman poet Tibullus.

Parable
By Kaethe Schwehn – Apr 2008 | No Comment
Parable

A poem by Kaethe Schwehn

Green
By Adam Golaski – Mar 2008 | No Comment
Green

Open Letters continues its serialization of Adam Golaski’s innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this, the third installment.

where sky meets earth where sky meets earth

A poem by Josely Vianna Baptista, translated by Chris Daniels, and featuring a drawing by Francisco Faria

Flat________
By Chad Reynolds – Feb 2008 | No Comment
Flat________

A poem by Chad Reynolds

Green
By Adam Golaski – Jan 2008 | No Comment
Green

Open Letters continues its serialization of Adam Golaski’s innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this, the second installment.

I Hope This Hasn’t Hurt You
By Samuel Wharton – Jan 2008 | No Comment
I Hope This Hasn’t Hurt You

A poem by Samuel Wharton

Green
By Adam Golaski – Dec 2007 | No Comment
Green

Open Letters presents the first of many installments of Adam Golaski’s innovative new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a serialization.

Descent
By Clayton Eshleman – Dec 2007 | No Comment
Descent

A poem by Clayton Eshleman

Two From No Tell Books
By Jeffrey Eaton – Dec 2007 | One Comment
Two From No Tell Books

Jeffrey Eaton absorbs himself in the weirdly familiar and the familiarly weird worlds of Shafer Hall’s Never Cry Woof and PF Potvin’s The Attention Lesson.

Pawtucket
By Daniel Bouchard – Nov 2007 | No Comment
Pawtucket

A poem by Daniel Bouchard

Two From Tupelo Press
By Chad Reynolds – Nov 2007 | No Comment
Two From Tupelo Press

Two poets gather up the treasures of the past, one by tossing them in a pile, the other by building a gallery. Chad Reynolds digs into new books by Amy England and Priscilla Sneff.

The ‘ol Battle Ax
By Josh Lefkowitz – Oct 2007 | No Comment
The ‘ol Battle Ax

A poem by Josh Lefkowitz

Vermont Casting
By Ravi Shankar – Sep 2007 | No Comment
Vermont Casting

A poem by Ravi Shankar

Two From FSG
By John Cotter – Aug 2007 | No Comment
Two From FSG

John Cotter leads us to the interior of two extremely different books of poetry, Charles Wright’s reflective and naturalist Littlefoot and Frederick Seidel’s garish and weird Ooga-Booga.

Doppelganger
By Maggie Smith – Aug 2007 | No Comment
Doppelganger

A poem by Maggie Smith

Heat
By Sommer Browning – Jul 2007 | No Comment
Heat

A poem by Sommer Browning

Two from Black Ocean Press
By Chris Tonelli – Jul 2007 | No Comment
Two from Black Ocean Press

Chris Tonelli tackles the wily metaphysics of Zachary Schomburg’s
The Man Suit and Paula Cisewski’s Upon Arrival.

One Man’s César Vallejo
By John Cotter – Jun 2007 | No Comment
One Man’s César Vallejo

John Cotter guides us through Clayton Eshleman’s translations of the startling, invigorating poetry of César Vallejo, one of the earliest and most underrepresented of the modernists.

IX from Trilce IX from Trilce

A transcontemporization of César Vallejo by Sampson Starkweather

Three From Coach House Books
By Adam Golaski – Jun 2007 | No Comment
Three From Coach House Books

Adam Golaski champions the “difficult read” in his review of the poetry of a. rawlings, Christian Bök, and Nathalie Stephens.

You Eatee?
By Steve Donoghue – May 2007 | No Comment
You Eatee?

Steve Donoghue reviews John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a new “cuss-and-codpiece” biography by the inconceivably youthful John Stubbs

Two From Saturnalia Books
By John Cotter – May 2007 | No Comment
Two From Saturnalia Books

John Cotter looks into new mixed-media books of poetry by Bill Knott and John Yau to discover shades of meaning in the interplay of artwork and verse.

Cabin
By Jennifer L. Knox – May 2007 | No Comment
Cabin

A poem by Jennifer L. Knox

Either Way, I’m Celebrating
By Sommer Browning – Apr 2007 | No Comment
Either Way, I’m Celebrating

A poem by Sommer Browning

Three From Wave Books
By Kathleen Rooney – Apr 2007 | No Comment
Three From Wave Books

Kathy Rooney makes a close study of the cool-quotient of new books of poetry by Eileen Myles, Matthew Rohrer, and Christian Hawkey.

Two from Tarpaulin Sky Press
By Elisa Gabbert – Mar 2007 | No Comment
Two from Tarpaulin Sky Press

Elisa Gabbert examines two genre-expanding books of poetry by Jenny Boully and Max Winter.

The Institute of Nautical Archaeology
By Shafer Hall – Mar 2007 | No Comment
The Institute of Nautical Archaeology

A poem by Shafer Hall