Originally published in 2017, this essay from our editor examines the previous year’s hit collections, Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong, and Portrait of an Alcoholic by Kaveh Akbar—and we’re so excited that both Kaveh and Ocean will be helping to…
francine j. harris says his poems “are as reverent and irreverent in the face of addiction as they are in the search for self.” Frank Bidart (National Book Award nominee this year) calls the book a “bounty, an intensely inventive…
For this Poems That Teach, we’ll be doing a close reading of a contemporary prayer-poem—looking for those moments of genius to copy in our own poetry. Join us as we explore the beauty and the humor of Andrew Hudgins’ “Praying…
Afterland by Mai Der Vang (Graywolf Press) “The sky sleeps quilted in a militia of stars.” —from “Light from a Burning Citadel” Winning the 2016 Walt Whitman Award, Mai Der Vang’s debut collection is a manifold text, acting at times…
Terrance Hayes says her poetry is “indispensable… These poems are fire.” “Stunning,” declares Angela Davis, “[this] volume reminds us that conflict and contradiction can produce hope and that poetry can orient us toward a future we may not yet realize…
Olio, by Tyehimba Jess, has won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for a distinguished volume of original verse by an American author. The depths Jess went to produce this 200+ page artifact of American History gives us critic’s vertigo—just so much…
Sonnets can be intimidating for new poets, but interest in the classic form is alive and well. Tyehimba Jess filled his Pulitzer-winning Olio with sonnets—syncopated sonnets, a crown of sonnets, sideways siamese sonnets; Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s title poem in The Crown…
