Celebrating National Poetry Month

Ocean Vuong, John Ashbery, Claudia Rankine, and more.

Poetry

April 12, 2024

In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve collected the work of twenty-four of our most beloved poets, all published in Boston Review over the last three decades.

Poetry
Anne Carson
Anne Carson

April 10, 2013

Poetry
Wisława Szymborska
Wisława Szymborska

June 1, 1998

Two Poems

As my relatives melted, I stood
on one leg, raised my arms, eyes shut, & thought:
tree tree tree as death passed me—untouched.

Ocean Vuong

Safe House

Solmaz Sharif

A Disservice

John Ashbery

Shelter

Yusef Komunyakaa

Guantánamo

Jorie Graham

My Life in the Tubes of Survival

Roberto Bolaño

The Soul

Tracy K. Smith

Between the Palm and the Ear, Is the Master’s Language

Natalie Diaz

Two Poems

From time to time, language dies. / It is dying now. / Who is alive to speak it?

Fady Joudah

Life During Wartime

Major Jackson

From That Were Once Beautiful Children

Claudia Rankine

Smell of Wings

The therapist says,
Picture a bird in your mind
What kind of bird is it?

Kim Hyesoon
Don Mee Choi

American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Terrance Hayes

Agave

Primo Levi

The Engineer of Vertical Frontiers

Cathy Park Hong

A Knock on the Door

James Tate

Talking to Little Birdies

Charles Simic

Seconds

Rae Armantrout

Five Poems

Juan Felipe Herrera

lotto motto

Evie Shockley

The End of the Ceasefire (The End of the Objectivist School?)

Kirill Medvedev

Two Poems

Mary Ruefle

Krapp Interviews the Glass Technician

Anne Carson

A Photograph of a Crowd

Wisława Szymborska

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