Lavanya Arora’s poems are perfect examples of how much place and description can ground a reader in the speaker’s world, and even within a speaker’s family lineage. What makes certain descriptors so enchanting is their contrast and saturation—river water in…
Is a stone-cold love still love, or does it mean far less? Could it mean nothing? These are the questions Mumukshu explores in this poem, moving through vacuums searching for the “atoms and magnets” which are associated with warmth and…
This month’s “In Retrospect” interview is with Patricia Smith, who won the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry for her collection The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.…
The loss of a loved one is particularly challenging to navigate when, in life, helping them navigate addiction added friction to the relationship. Anna Leonard’s poem captures this friction in the exploration of knowing versus not knowing, negligibility versus negligence.…
In this sonnet, one turn—one volta—comes in the form of an italicized word: Bloqueo. Given that Trinity Tibe’s speaker continually seeks throughout the poem to discover more insight about her father, this turn underscores the fact that he is impossible…
This month’s “In Retrospect” interview is with Adedayo Agarau, whose collection The Years of Blood won the Poetic Justice Institute Editor’s Prize for BIPOC Writers. In this series, we ask renowned poets to look back over their poems and collections,…
Even the smallest of exchanges between beloveds carry the weight of an entire relationship, as Molly Thapviwat proves with her poem “LEAVE-IN.” Careful, intentional attention given to particular language exchanged about love impacts the way it feels between two people,…
Sometimes, our dreams are so odd that they don’t really elucidate our anxieties, and other times, they’re uncannily precise in their replay of our feelings and experiences. Yosra Bouslama begins “Grace Period” inside of one dream, a dream about losing…
This month’s “In Retrospect” interview is with Grant Chemidlin, whose first collection was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. In this series, we ask renowned poets to look back over their poems and collections, mapping out…
How do we elegize even the smallest of creatures? How do we respond to the “natural order” of their dying? In her poem, Iris Lee gives careful consideration to a box of silkworms; the images and sensations of the speaker’s…
