“Poetry leaves something out,” our columnist Elisa Gabbert says. But that’s hardly the extent of it. By Elisa Gabbert I once heard a student say poetry is language that’s “coherent enough.” I love a ...

There is an appropriateness, somehow, in turning to ”Next-to-Last Things” in this, the waning of the year. It is that kind of book: Portrait of the artist as an old man. One pictures the 80-year-old ...

Friendship, for poets, has long been grist for the mill. Anyone studying poetry is likely to stumble upon literary friendships – William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge come instantly to mind, ...

Alexie never thought he could leave his reservation to pursue a writing career—but a line written by Adrian C. Louis taught him to venture outside the "reservation of his mind." But in an interview ...

In his second collection of essays, Tony ­Hoagland sets out on what seems a doubly impossible task, even for one of the more interesting and exciting poets writing today. His plan? To put forth 20 ...

One of the highlights of my first three years as a literature professor at MIT—and indeed, of my 15-year career as an educator—has been the recent discovery that some of my students, past and present, ...

When I first read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, I leaned into every word, inhaling Celie’s tragic and triumphant story. In Celie, I felt the presence and pain of my female family members brought up ...

Belfast poet Michael Longley speaking in 2024 with Olivia O'Leary about poems he had written about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Show more The Irish poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January ...