Of all genres of writing, poetry has to be the most subjective, the most deeply personal. Certainly many memoirs reveal heartfelt confessions, but that's for the writer; it's rarely as personal for ...

These poems by Mainers appeared in “Notes from an Open Book,” a monthly e-newsletter of the Maine Humanities Council. SMELT SHACKS By Joseph Coleman The frost-heaved road lined with cord on cord of ...

In Dr. Fady Joudah’s poem “House of Mercury,” a severe summer storm has blown over Houston. The storm’s destructive winds woke up the narrator’s father, who hears the “snaps and creaks” of the two ...

SOME have tried to make us believe that what Muhammad Ali, the boxing legend, once uttered must be considered the world’s shortest poem. He said: “Me Whee!” On the other hand, Aram Saroyan’s poem that ...

TIME was when a poet with so clearly American a quality as Robert Frost would have been hailed as a Yankee Vergil, Theocritus, Burns, or what you will. Now it may be said that an American is striking ...

When we think about “how to read poetry” – if we are the sort of people who think about such things – we’re likely to think: “Well, what does it mean?” What is the poetry “really” trying to say here?

How do you cope with, and de-stress from, the endlessly interesting times we live in? Exercise? Socially distanced sounding off to friends? Self-medication via Netflix box sets? If your response – not ...

Fifty years ago this month, City Lights Books published Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems–a collection of ranting, ecstatic verses that challenged the conservatism of Eisenhower-era America.