Poetry Foundation & Poetry Magazine

11/25/2024

my father stays a boy to be
tender to his mother.

—Triin Paja in the November issue of POETRY.

my father lives in the river. I kneel by the river luring him: father, let’s steal plums from our neighbor’s garden, let’s shake his trees!

11/25/2024

For Jan Beatty, poetry is neither intellectual exercise nor fodder for the tenure file, but an incantatory statement of inner life: a protest, a jeremiad, a prophecy, a manifesto.

—Ed Simon profiles the punk laureate of Pittsburgh. https://bit.ly/3UYF9zC

11/24/2024

DECEMBER 5 join us an evening of music, poetry, dialogue, memory-weaving, and community gathering to honor the James Baldwin Centennial, featuring avery r. young, Jamila Woods, Samiya Bashir, and t'ai freedom ford.

Register to attend this hybrid event: https://bit.ly/3ZfS55x

11/24/2024

Having to confront her own mortality early on gave [Elizabeth Arnold] an exigent clarity of mind, allowing her to perceive with an imaginative buoyancy the network of connections between the body’s distress and the operations of the world […].

—Joshua Weiner remembers Elizabeth Arnold.

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

11/24/2024

The Poetry Foundation will close at 1 PM CT on Wednesday, November 7. We'll resume normal hours on December 4.

Plan your next visit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/visit

11/23/2024

Of the quakiness of infancy and old age
we shimmer and shimmy into being
and out again. In the mean-
time, we're horses in the stable of the myth.

—Jennifer Michael Hecht, who was born in 1965.

I believe you can build a boat. I do not believe you can get the boat on water. The water in this metaphor is unreal because of the way time passes, so you can't quite get the boat on water, but you can build the boat, and a boat is good for a lot of things not just on water. It is important to let....

11/23/2024

The Poetry Foundation building will be closed today, November 23.

11/23/2024

I always wonder where the ghosts are
& if they still celebrate the living

Headlights hush through our window
in the eternal language of the grasses.

—Kinsale Drake with the .

I lay me down across the metro tracks Bless the parking lot where I kissed a city ndn There are lullabies downtown: the desert moans at night bringing the smell of cold or a bloody nose White hippies smoke, waist-deep in overwatered native gardens We never did go to Amoeba but we kneeled at…

11/22/2024

To the question: What is poetry? Ryan Ruby answers—“whatever / anyone says it is.” And if poetry is whatever anyone says it is, the corollary is that anyone is a poet.

—Jared Marcel Pollen on CONTEXT COLLAPSE, a mock-academic history of poetry.

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

11/22/2024

John palpitating love notes
in a lost-found nation
within a nation
His music resounding discovery
signed Always
John Coltrane

—Jayne Cortez in the November issue of POETRY.

CW: Strong language

Tell me about the good things you clappin & laughin Will you remember or will you forget Forget about the good things like Blues & Jazz being black Yeah Black Music all about you And the musicians that write & play about you a black brother groanin a black sister moanin & beautiful…

11/21/2024

Congratulations to POETRY magazine contributor, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and the other 2024 winners! 🎉

Announcing the Winners of the 2024 National Book Awards!

11/21/2024

Again, what’s wrong here is exactly right, and thus irritation is our gateway to poetry’s pleasure.

—Graham Foust in the November issue of POETRY.
https://bit.ly/4ftORSc

11/20/2024

sie braucht sich nur fallen zu
lassen
Kirschen und Trauben

she just needs to let herself
fall
cherries and grapes

—Annette C. Boehm in the November issue of POETRY.

ihr Ruf erklingt wie allerlei Früchte; grün und purpurn ein lautes Lachen.— sie braucht sich nur fallen zu lassen Kirschen und Trauben

11/20/2024

Shuntaro Tanikawa (1931-2024) https://bit.ly/4fOVMGp

11/19/2024

Biliyorum benimle gelen gemi
Benimle gitmeyecek.

I know the ship I came on
Won’t leave with me.

—Rüştü Onur (trans. by Ulaş Özgün and Hüseyin Alhas) in the November issue of POETRY. https://bit.ly/3Af6Qgs

11/19/2024

The Northwest New Mexico Arts Council supports the literary and performing arts, STEAM education, and other enrichment for people of all ages.

Learn more about our grantee-partner:

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

11/19/2024

Happy birthday to 2022 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner, Sharon Olds! 🎊

It happened sentence by sentence, slowly, like pick-up sticks. But now I had said, “The math in graduate school—was it real, or theoretical?” “What do you mean?” “Well 2 apples plus 2 apples is 4 ... ” “It was all theory,” he said, “but it had to be proved true, to be used fo...