Back Talk: Honor Moore
Christine Smallwood : Back Talk
Poet Honor Moore talks about her family's response to her memoir, The Bishop's Daughter.
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Personal Histories
Benjamin Paloff
New collections by Adam Zagajewski and Julia Hartwig suggest that postwar Polish verse can't be reduced to "poetry of witness."
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A Nurse of Enchantment
Ange Mlinko
Helen Adam wrote to raise gooseflesh. A new collection of her work takes her on her own terms.
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One Sun Roaring
Jordan Davis
The Zen reflections in Philip Whalen's poetry have been collected in one beautiful book.
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Un Lio Bestial
Forrest Gander
In his poetry Roberto Bolaño gave himself over to the subversive, to antiheroes, ballad and saga.
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A Test of Poetry
James Longenbach
More than any other American poet, George Oppen begs us to consider the elusive relationship between aesthetic and political responsibilities.
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A Human Pledge
Susan Stewart
The most important American love poet in living memory, Robert Creeley celebrated the body and its ambivalent desires with a touch as light as a song.
2007
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The Madman and the Poet
In a new collection of poems by the mentally ill Czech dissident Ivan Blatný, the world and the poet's interpretations of it are continuously transforming.
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A Kind of Waiting Always
A new book of Rod Smith's poems maps the geometry of social life in thoughts and phrases.
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Dreamlife Without Angels
John Ashbery has given us the ideal poetry for the Information Age.
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Playtime
The Surrealist dissident Raymond Queneau turned his writings into a lab for his experiments, and the results are still exhilarating.
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The Imperfectionist
Reconsidering the life and legacy of avant-garde artist and poet Francis Picabia.
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Revolutionary Devotion
Roberto González Echevarría : Peru
Communism, Catholicism and radical Modernism meet on the dissecting table of César Vallejo's poetry.
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Bolaño in Mexico
As a young writer in the 1970s, Roberto Bolaño was expected to choose between two rival factions of Mexican poets. He chose both.
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The Strains of Inspiration
Jonathan Rée : Public Figures & Intellectuals
The Friendship describes how Wordsworth and Coleridge's fiercely uneven relationship affected their lives and work.
2006
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A View From the Bridge
Hart Crane, one of America's greatest poets, relished the extremes that eventually destroyed him.
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2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize: Eleanor Lerman
Tony Hoagland : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
Eleanor Lerman's poems sing a song that is bravely gloomy, but they sing it with a fierce and earned dignity.
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The Last Antiwar Poem
Allen Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra," written at the height of the Vietnam War, speaks with a jarring relevance today.
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Poetry, From Noun to Verb
Nathaniel Mackey's most recent collection of subtle, intricate poetry weaves images from Arab and African diasporas with a contemporary sense of dislocation.
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The Passion of Anna
In Elaine Feinstein's new biography, the complicated life of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova is flattened into a fable of suffering and redemption.
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The Poet and the Muse
Mark M. Anderson : Public Figures & Intellectuals
A new collection of letters between Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salome reveals an intimate portrait of a poet and his muse.
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The Master of Modernismo
Roberto González Echevarría : Nicaragua
Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, all but unknown in English-speaking countries, had a global impact on literature, ushering Spanish poetry into the modern era.
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La Vie de Bohème
John Palattella : New York City
Drawing from the New York counterculture in which he immersed himself, Ted Berrigan's sonnets and other poems sing beautifully about being broken and graceful and tough.
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Dr. Fun
Kenneth Koch was one of the merrier in the bunch known as the New York School of poets. But he was more than just a poet of humor. He sought the essential nature of human existence, and displayed his infectious awe of the universe in enchanting verse.
2005
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2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize
Anne Winters's The Displaced of Capital, winner of the 2005 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, is a reflective, documentary and visionary volume of poetry inspired by the city of New York.
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Don't Criticize Me
Calvin Trillin : US Politics & Government
Karl Rove and his Singing Slimemeisters riff You Go To My Head.
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Scooter Libby: A Republican Nursery Rhyme
Catching small fry, letting the big fish go.
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Another Miracle From Bill Frist
Calvin Trillin : Conservatives & The American Right
The doctor who proved himself a master of distant diagosis has one more trick up his sleeve.
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Deadline for Saddam
Saddam Hussein went to trial on Wednesday declaring he was still the president of Iraq. A decade-old series of odes to Hussein's dictatorial days show the tyrant was always out of touch with reality.
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One Possible Scenario
Calvin Trillin : Supreme Court
One twisted tale of how Harriet Miers's confirmation hearings will unfold.
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Readers Respond to Sharon Olds
Readers respond to poet Sharon Olds's decision to decline Laura Bush's invitation to dine at the White House.
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To Return and Rise Again
Brenda Marie Osbey : Louisiana
Louisiana's poet laureate writes of the resolve of New Orleans's displaced citizens to rebuild their shattered city.
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A Robertson Republican
Bush's paean to his staunchest ally's murderous impulses, with apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan.
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Prosaic Judgments
John Palattella : Cultural Criticism & Analysis
Adam Kirsch prefers his own ideas about poetry to actual poems.
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Patrimony
John Palattella : African-Americans
Kevin Young updates the Harlem Renaissance for the hip-hop generation.
2004
2003
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Poetry Makes Nothing Happen? Ask Laura Bush
So much for democracy, free speech and vigorous discussion.
2002
2000
This week: The Nation's reporter in Georgia talks for the first time about being assaulted by Ossetian paramilitaries. Plus: Dave Zirin recaps the olympic highs and lows, Barbara Crossette considers the future for Pakistan and John Nichols and historian Adele Oltman preview the Democratic Convention in the context of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream. (13mb mp3)
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