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COVER STORY

The Doubter and the Saint

“Had he played the hero, we wouldn’t have the astonishing miracle of poems, essays, novels, journals, and translations that poured out from this spiritually troubled man.” Cynthia Haven examines the contradictions that inform the poetry of Czesław Miłosz.

MORE FEATURES

The First Walt Whitman Poem
BY David Baker
In the little-known "Time to Come," a rather goth young rhyming Romantic shows the first stirrings of genius.

"Appearing and Disappearing Like True Poetry"
BY Ben Ehrenreich
Roberto Bolaño’s legions of fictional poets and his own heartbroken insurrectionary poems.

Winter Pearl
BY Linda Bierds
How Margaret Avison balances image, thought, and story to convey the numinous in her "New Year's Poem."

Anne Sexton's Scrapbook
BY Jessica Helfand
A look inside the young poet's life 16 years before she won the Pulitzer Prize.

California Sorrow
Mary Kinzie Interviewed by Emily Warn
How So-Cal's supernatural landscape and T.S. Eliot's failed romance influenced Mary Kinzie's latest book.

Fight Club
BY Don Bogen
Josephine Miles' overlooked lyric masterpiece "Cage" depicts a feuding couple and the dreamy freedom just outside their door.

On Poetry and Water
BY Arthur Sze
In the first of our essays inspired by the Pulitzer Foundation's Water Exhibition, the poet finds inspiration in Roni Horn's art and the I Ching.

Drowning in a Sea of Love
BY Cole Swensen
The slippery meanings of the Hero and Leander myth as seen in Cy Twombly's painting and the poem Christopher Marlowe died writing.

Flowing Uphill
BY Andrew Joron
An admirer of Leonardo's Deluge drawings finds the key to poetry in the turbulent properties of water he revealed.

Meet the Beetles
BY Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Linda Pastan captures the sound of mortality in “The Deathwatch Beetle,” echoing Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Mary Ann Hoberman Named Children's Poet Laureate
BY Michael Atkinson
Whether writing about llamas in pajamas or befuddled fauna, her poems are always about the puzzlement of language.

Albert Goldbarth Wins Mark Twain Award for Humorous Poetry
Albert Goldbarth interviewed by Richard Siken
America's funniest bard doesn't just win awards, he also collects robots and rocket ships.

Something Antlered This Way Comes
BY Toby Eckert
How Elizabeth Bishop devoted 20 years to immortalizing a moment in her classic poem "The Moose."

The Rebirth of a Suicidal Genius
BY Lucie Brock-Broido
Thomas James died obscure at 27 in 1974, then became a cult hero. Now Graywolf republishes his lost, legendary Letters to a Stranger.

Hope You Like Slammin' Too
Karyna McGlynn and Ragan Fox interviewed by Jeremy Richards
Slam poets Karyna McGlynn and Ragan Fox explain why they're compelled to leap right off the page and into your face.

Hear the Essential American Poets
BY The Editors
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall picked over 100 of the century's best poets—now listen to them read their best work in a new PF podcast series.

The Title Above the Name
BY Michael Atkinson
Don't judge a poetry book by its cover—judge it by the very first words you see.

He Fancied Nancy
BY Jordan Davis
How poet/artist Joe Brainard's transgressive passion for the spiky-haired comics icon inspired him to invent poetry comics (with a little help from Ted Berrigan).

Reading Guide: Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty”
BY Joshua Weiner
A highly reader-friendly explanation of an Irish war elegy by the most popular living poet in our language. Master a masterpiece in one easy sitting.

Home Appreciation
BY Susan Thomsen
Homeschoolers are turning a million kids on to poetry—through fun, not homework. Here's how you can do it too.

FEATURES FROM POETRY

Visual Poetry Today
BY Geof Huth
They are not merely poems, but they are certainly poems.

Literary Fame in the Time of Flame Wars
BY Adam Kirsch
Is the Internet really going to change how literary reputations get made?

Beyond Heaney?
BY Carmine Starnino
Five Irish poets who are changing Irish poetry: Eavan Boland, Harry Clifton; Medbh McGuckian, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Ciaran Carson.

"Information, Thy Nemesis is Reverie"
BY Ange Mlinko
How Devin Johnston and Linda Gregg chase the Romantic.