Poetry: Two Poems by Momtaza Mehri
When poems carry as much raw energy as these two by Momtaza Mehri, we feel the joy of riding language like a wild horse—all instinct and reaction and emotion on the edge, one joy to the next, with hardly a…
Category: Poetry
Poetry: The Monsters Are Due— by Jennifer Givhan
Here, Jennifer Givhan lays bare a particular American anxiety, in all it’s ambiguity, in all its banal suburbanness. “The Monsters Are Due” is about motherhood and childhood and Americanhood—a reminder that once eyes are open, we have to fight to…
2017 Award for New Poets Shortlist
Congratulations to the twenty-five poets chosen for our 2017 Award for New Poets shortlist! The following poems were sent to Tyehimba Jess for final selection and the winners will be announced on or before January 1, 2018. Thank you again…
Poetry: The Whale by Cassandra Farrin
Cassandra Farrin’s poem rustles with the sound of waves and devils. “The Whale” is exactly how you make surprising a literary figure so well known as to be automatically cliche in lesser hands. Let the lines fill your mouth with…
Poetry: Hiroshima, Japan, 1945 by Katie Bickham
Katie Bickham’s “Hiroshima, Japan, 1945” is a masterclass in characterization within a poem. Yoshiko lives and breathes with real, genuine depth across the 36 lines—and when a poem works this hard to give us a character so delightful, wisdom is…
Poetry: I Guess We’ll Have to Be Secretly in Love by Rosebud Ben-oni
Rosebud Ben-Oni’s love poem curls into itself, thematically and visually—put the anaphoric “to” on your tongue and let her generosity of language and image carry you into equine affection. There’s so much given here, and where a lesser poem would…
Poetry: Prayer by Carolyn Oliver
Some poems evoke an old voice inside—maybe manufactured by school, by history, by Dickinson—that leaps from word to word with unexpected vitality and novelty. Carolyn Oliver’s “Prayer”—a Golden Shovel, the form invented by Terrance Hayes—presses “the long lush dark” into…
Poetry: 3 Poems by Kristin Chang
Call these three poems by Kristin Chang brutal. Call them violent, haunting, body-strewn and murderous. But do not deny their anchored beauty and exquisite craft—the heart and family and city laid bare, the poetry besieged by the tragedy of bodies.…
Poetry: The Domino Effect by Jeff Whitney
“The Domino Effect” is one of those poems that travels. Jeff Whitney uses these couplets to assemble vastness, one aphorism at a time, one startling image leaning into the next. What’s left, the poem ultimately asks, when it all falls down?…
Poetry: Essay Retreat by Afua Ansong
A strange connection exists between poetry and teaching, and Afua Ansong explores it beautifully with subtle couplets and understated scene work. Notice how her students come alive in the focus of her language, how the poem respects Joseph and Erika…
