Poetry

Browse our essays and reviews on poetry.

The Speed of Life

Lilies Without by Laura Kasischke.

  • Stephanie Burt

Seeing Voices

On Hannah Weiner’s Open House.

  • Joyelle McSweeney

The Truth of Things

Time and Materials: Poems 1997–2005 by Robert Hass.

  • Katie Peterson

Microreview: Rachel Wetzsteon, Sakura Park

As much an ode to the city as it is a documentation of love and loss.

  • Amy Newlove Schroeder

Microreview: Standing in Line for the Beast, Pain Fantasy

Two collections from Jason Bredle.

  • Charlie Clark

Microreview: Brian Kim Stefans, Kluge

Poems that read like a handbook for the future avant-garde.

  • Noah Eli Gordon

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Microreview: Susan Hutton, On the Vanishing of Large Creatures

This debut collection focuses on the fundamental question of history: What part of now will be remembered later?

  • Matthew Thorburn

Microreview: Paul Guest, Exit Interview

Poems that temper violence with Whitmanesque generosity.

  • Chris Tonelli

Unfinished Story

On Holocaust by Charles Reznikoff.

  • Kathryn Crim

Microreview: Liam Rector, The Executive Director of the Fallen World

The last collection before the poet's suicide. 

  • Robert Schnall

Small Packages

Emblems of Desire: Selections from the Délie of Maurice Scève.

  • Jennifer Grotz

Neither Settled Nor Easy

One Big Self: An Investigation by C.D. Wright.

  • Alan Gilbert

Microreview: Paisley Rekdal, The Invention of the Kaleidoscope

Brilliantly-made poems that are complicated, constantly in flux, and fragmented.

  • Victoria Chang

Microreview: Matthew Zapruder, The Pajamaist

Poems presented as objects of contemplation.

  • Kathleen Rooney

Microreview: Jaime Saenz, The Night

The Night redefines what it means to be illuminated by anatomizing the experience of being enveloped in darkness.

  • Aaron Belz

His Face in the Mirror

On the poetry of Zbigniew Herbert.

  • W. Martin

The Testament of Mr. Cogito

Zbigniew Herbert and the limits of the political.

  • Alissa Valles

Enlivened Parties

Two new collections from Joanna Klink and Geoffrey G. O'Brien.

  • Reginald Shepherd

Microreview: Susan Briante, Pioneers in the Study of Motion

“Unstable love, detached love, underperforming love, neo-liberal love.”

  • Simon DeDeo

The City Visible

Chicago Poetry for the New Century

  • Fred Muratori

Microreview: Cole Swenson, The Glass Age

Poems that sit alongside Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin, and Gilles Deleuze.

  • Celia Bland

Microreview: Christine Garren, The Piercing

Unflinchingly severe poems.

  • Craig Morgan Teicher

Microreview: James Longenbach, Draft of a Letter

Poems that balance verbal paucity with connotative richness.

  • Jennifer Chang

Review: Radiant Lyre

: Essays on Lyric Poetry

  • Tess Taylor
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