Taiye lands this poem in the delicate spot between bodies and dreams—a primal response can’t be helped against the throaty “leaves”, the “claws” of death and drowning. The reader wakes from Taiye’s “Dream” with their whole day changed. I…
For this Poetry Terms, we’d like dig into an ever present issue with emerging poets: how do you break a line? Every poet makes a home of the poetic line, and a deliberate approach through well-wrought linecraft ultimately serves to…
Bales packages her frank questioning here with untamed energy and honesty. “Questions” crafts a strange comfort in the face of death—precisely—as its title suggests—because the poem does not gesture at hollow answers, but wrestles with humor and charm the incredible…
Here’s a short selection of some of the best new poems hitting the web. These six poets, both established and emerging, all have talent worth enjoying (& copying). Enjoy, and be grateful, knowing so many awesome poets are making our…
For “Close,” Wesner generates—with the smallest lines she could—the broad ambiguity we have toward our bodies, our parents, our thinking. So many powerful punches land between these two-three word lines; these sentence long stanzas fight above their weight. Close…
As a platform for emerging poets, our mission is to provide practical help for serious writers. The community lifts itself up together or not at all. In that light, we’ve been asking some great editors from around the literary community…
“Aubade with La Bestia” beautifully parses the potential of a love poem through eyes contemporary and rarely seen. As all good love poems, Aguilar’s aubade sings of power, and generosity, and longing, and violence—the dark immutable violence always hugging the…
Natasha Tretheway calls the book “a piercing meditation, rooted in loss and longing, and manifest in dazzling leaps of the imagination.” And Patrick Rosal: “In Some Say the Lark, anything can erupt into fury, anything into tenderness.” Jennifer Chang’s second…
New month, new courage: submit yourself to these fellowships, magazines, awards and internships. & as always, submit poetry for free to our New Voices. Bettering American Poetry Vol. 3 The third volume in the Bettering American Poetry series is…
Some poems step out from conventional wisdom of lines and stanzas bashful and hesitant—”Game Theory” by Zoe Hitzig is not bashful or hesitant. The atypical shape is a joy for the reader’s eye, a puzzle to put together that once…