“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 ...

Humans spend most of their waking hours playing with what novelist Rudyard Kipling called “the most powerful drug used by mankind”—words. In the laboratories of our minds, we sort, slice, and string ...

In “What is Poetry? Part 1,” Jeffrey Thomson mentions everything from badgers and hurricanes to subways and Times Square. Somehow that makes the “Part 2” poem from his new book, “Half/Life: New & ...

As guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2024, Mary Jo Salter spent last year scouring literary journals for 75 of the best poems from 75 different poets. To appear in the volume is a coveted honor ...

At one time or another, when face-to-face with a poem, most everyone has been perplexed. The experience of reading a poem itself is as likely to turn us off, intellectually or emotionally, as it is to ...

The most striking thing about contemporary poetry is that no one seems quite satisfied with it. Non-poets, who generally don’t read poetry, are only a little less enthusiastic than poets, who do.

Lyricism in poetry is like the water poured in at the end of cooking rice,” said Jeong Ho-seung (75), one of Korea’s representative lyric poets. “Just as rice cannot be cooked without water, lyricism ...

The Terminal List: Dark Wolf breaks its genre shackles. It is more than a prequel or a companion piece– it is an exploration ...