poetry Archive
“We licked the dictionary off each other’s faces” : Bhanu Kapil’s Humanimal: A Project for Future Children
What’s wrong with being raised by wolves? In Humanimal: A Project for Future Childen, Bhanu Kapil investigates “the true story of Kamala and Amala, two girls found living with wolves in Bengal, India, in 1920” (ix). But unlike a crowd drawn to witness a re-enactment, Kapil’s book instead involves
“Little, safe boxes that contain trauma and violence”: An Interview with Jehanne Dubrow
Jehanne Dubrow’s latest collection of poems, The Arranged Marriage, tells a difficult and moving story about the poet’s mother and her early life. The narrative gradually comes into focus for the reader through a sequence of beautiful, haunting prose poems—narrow blocks of words the poet likens to “newspaper columns”
Guns and Poems: Why is it (almost) impossible to write a great poem about guns?
Poetry has a history of violence. It was true a few hundred years ago, when bards wrote of knights and of great battles, and it is true today, when poets pick up their pens to write about the trauma of war, abuse, or repression. Whether they abhor it or
“If I could I would cut off my lovers’ heads” : Eunice De Souza’s Nine Indian Women Poets
“Anthologists invariably make enemies,” Eunice De Souza notes in her introduction to Nine Indian Women Poets. This anthology is unlike most anthologies, as De Souza takes up her editorial role to rally against universality, mapmaking, and flattery. De Souza isn’t seeking to make enemies, but she realizes that all
“Poets should always take public transportation”: An Interview with Maureen Thorson
In her second book of poems, My Resignation, Maureen Thorson immerses us in the story of two people figuring out how to start a new life together. Her poems are finely textured, moving, and often humorous. She has a keen appreciation for the quirky natural detail or odd snippet
Half the World More: Juan Felipe Herrera and the Centering of Chicana/o Letters
Juan Felipe Herrera being named our 21st U.S. Poet Laureate is special for a few reasons. He is the first Latino U.S. Poet Laureate in history, but also an unlikely if necessary one. It’s no obscure fact that his writing has historically been underappreciated, undercelebrated even. Herrera’s writing has
Well-Traveled Verse: The Book of Poems You’ll Find Everywhere in India
Indian bookstores come in wide varieties: street-sellers pitch copies of everything from tabloids to Freud, more upscale boutiques feature plastic-wrapped paperbacks in scholarly fields, and stuffed-to-the-brim cubicles at train depots deliver Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels beside worn editions of the Gita. But, without a doubt, I always came across copies
Goliath: Reading Kyle Dargan’s “Honest Engine” During the Baltimore Riots
I read Kyle Dargan’s poem “Goliath” the night of the Baltimore riots. I was in Mexico City where the images of the riots made it to the Mexican presses before the story did—Freddie Gray, the police beatings, his snapped spinal cord. The details simply hadn’t been translated yet. But the
The Poetry of Subtle Movement
In recent months, Farrar, Straus and Giroux has released two poetry collections that encapsulate much of what I love about poetry: James Lasdun’s Bluestone: New and Selected Poems and Devin Johnston’s Far-Fetched. Lasdun and Johnston are quite different in style and subject matter, but they are both masters of
THE NEUTRAL CORNER: Michael Hofmann’s “Where Have You Been?” And Gottfried Benn’s “Impromptus”
The neutral corner is one of the two corners of the ring not used by boxers between rounds. It is also the corner a boxer must retreat to after he has floored his opponent. The Neutral Corner was also a bar in Saratoga Springs, New York, that I frequented