Malpaís / Badlands / Majesty
I don’t go to poems for skillful ease or what’s rote. I come seeking an empathic witness, what the Sufi calls ruhul seyrani—the …
Poetics
Henri Cole’s Nothing to Declare
Few things embolden the iconoclast like punditry’s insistence on singing mediocrity. Like recent books by Louise Glück (whose Faithful and Virtuous …
Working through Ted Hughes’ “February 17th”
A lamb could not get born. Ice wind Out of a downpour dishclout sunrise. The mother Lay on the mudded …
Misunderstanding Poetry
I took the AP Literature examination near the end of my junior year in high school. From what I recall, …
Imaginative Surety
A used book was gifted me by the Ma: The New Poetry: An Anthology, published 1917, edited by Harriet Monroe. …
Thoughts on Roethke’s “Death Piece”
Invention sleeps within a skull No longer quick with light, The hive that hummed in every cell Is now …
‘Kitsch Omega’ and the Queer Aesthetic
In his seminal “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (if you haven’t read it, head [here] right away), art historian and critic Clement …
Youna Kwak and ‘The Living Substance’
Without minimizing the joy and magic that poetry enacts in place, there is the further possibility that poetry can do more than entertain …
The Spider in Laura Riding
Elegy in a Spider’s Web What to say when the spider Say when the spider what When the spider the …
‘Edgy’ Poetry
Let’s be frank: the ‘edgy’ in poetry is a called-for characteristic of the most nebulous sort. Yet a cursory look …
Academic Confessionalism
Stephanie Rose Adams and I recently concluded that strands connecting every bit of especially bad verse—take nearly all the poems …
Carol Muske-Dukes’ “Hate Mail”
Let’s say, for a moment, that I am among that widening claque of poets who feel less and less tethered …
