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A painting of a waterfall in the Rocky Mountains.

America the Beautiful

The poem that became a hymn to the nation came about in troubled, polarizing times.
by Lincoln Caplan via The American Scholar on July 4, 2025
Robert Frost.

Chapters and Verse

Looking for the poet between the lines.
by Jay Parini via The American Scholar on March 3, 2025
Robert Frost.

The Many Guises of Robert Frost

Sometimes seen as the stuff of commencement addresses, his poems are hard to pin down—just like the man behind them.
by Maggie Doherty via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman: The Original Substacker

Publishing needs his democratic spirit.
by Sam Kahn via UnHerd on December 13, 2024
The Fallen Angels on the Wing by Gustave Doré, a dark painting of angels falling from heaven.

The Political Afterlife of Paradise Lost

From white supremacists to black activists, readers have sought moral legitimacy in Milton’s epic poem.
by Lucy Hughes-Hallett via New Statesman on November 7, 2024
Robert Frost on his farm near Ripton, Vermont.

America’s Great Poet of Darkness

A reconsideration of Robert Frost at 150.
by Ed Simon via The Hedgehog Review on March 26, 2024
Books, diaries and poetry collections from the Issei Poetry Project.

Issei Poetry Between the World Wars

The rich history of Japanese-language literature challenges assumptions about what counts as U.S. art.
by Kenji C. Liu via High Country News on March 1, 2024
A first edition of the book "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral", by Phillis Wheatley.

Presidents Day, Meet Black History Month

Remembering an exchange between George Washington and the poet Phillis Wheatley.
by Marvin Olasky via The Dispatch on February 24, 2024
Black and white portrait of Jones Very

The Voice of Unfiltered Spirit

In the poetry of Jones Very, whom his contemporaries considered “eccentric” and “mad," the self is detached from everything by an intoxicated egoism.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on January 18, 2024
Collage of poets and scoring.

The Gift of Slam Poetry

A short history of a misunderstood literary genre and the world it created.
by Joshua Bennett via The Nation on April 26, 2023
Drawing of Phillis Wheatley writing at a desk.

The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship

A new biography of Phillis Wheatley places her in her era and shows the ways she used poetry to criticize the existence of slavery.
by Tiya Miles via The Atlantic on April 22, 2023
Collage of poets and words.

Spoken Like a True Poet

In Joshua Bennett’s history of spoken word, poetry is alive and well thanks to a movement that began in living rooms and bars.
by Stephen Kearse via Poetry Foundation on March 27, 2023
Professor Wendy Roberts holding a book.

UAlbany Professor Finds New Poem by Famed Early American Poet Phillis Wheatley

Discovery of Phillis Wheatley's earliest known elegy in a commonplace book gives us important insights into her early life and how her work circulated.
by Bethany Bump via SUNY Albany on January 17, 2023
Black writers Askia Toure, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ismael Reed seated at an Umbra meeting.

A New Flame for Black Fire

What will be the legacy of the Black Arts Movement? Ishmael Reed reflects on the transformation and growth of Black arts since the 1960s.
by Ishmael Reed via New York Review of Books on January 14, 2023
Dorothea and Gladys Cromwell serving French troops outside the Cantine des Deux Drapeaux in Châlons-sur-Marne.
partner

Strange, Inglorious, Humble Things

The Cromwell twins fled the constrictions of high society for the freedoms of the literary world. Ravenous for greater purpose, the twins then went to war.
by Justin Duerr via JSTOR Daily on November 9, 2022
Collage image of Emily Dickinson in Dunkin Donuts

Did Emily Dickinson Have A Boston Accent? An Investigation

An exploration of the potential effects of regional accents on poetry and slant-rhyme.
by Kelsey McKinney via Defector on October 11, 2022
Rob McKuen infront of a background composed of spines of his books.

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.
by Dan Kois via Slate on October 10, 2022
Claude McKay speaking at the Kremlin, as printed in the December 1923 issue of the Crisis.

The Proletarian Poet

A new book on Claude McKay is part of an effort to place the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance within the Black radical tradition.
by Jennifer Wilson via Dissent on July 25, 2022
Painting of a Puritan family sitting around a table with books.

Read More Puritan Poetry

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.
by Ed Simon via The Millions on February 4, 2022
Black and white photograph of Lucille Clifton.

Lucille Clifton and the Task of Remembering

The poet’s memoir Generations is both a chronicle of her ancestral lineage and lesson in the centrality of Black women to the story of American history.
by Marina Magloire via The Nation on January 12, 2022
Photograph of Mabel Loomis Todd with a child

Bitchy Little Spinster

Emily Dickinson and the woman in her orbit.
by Joanne O'Leary via London Review of Books on June 3, 2021
Portrait of Walt Whitman.

How the American Civil War Gave Walt Whitman a Call to Action

Mark Edmundson on the great American poet as a defender of democracy.
by Mark Edmundson via Literary Hub on April 16, 2021
Walt Whitman.

What Walt Whitman Knew About Democracy

For the great American poet, the peculiar qualities of grass suggested a way to resolve the tension between the individual and the group.
by Mark Edmundson via The Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2021
Black and white photo of poet John Berryman having a beer and a conversation with a group of men

‘The Roots of Our Madness’

John Berryman's Dream Songs made explicit the racialization of American poetry's turn—and the whiteness of lyric tradition.
by Kamran Javadizadeh via New York Review of Books on April 8, 2021
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

The Poetics of Abolition

For poet Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, as for the Black Romantics, history is the repetition of anti-Black violence that has yet to be abolished.
by Manu Samriti Chander via Public Books on March 16, 2021
James Weldon Johnson.

James Weldon Johnson’s Ode to the “Deep River” of American History

What an old poem says about the search for justice following the Capitol riot.
by David W. Blight via The New Republic on March 2, 2021
Painting of the rocky mountains

How ‘America the Beautiful’ was Born

The United States’ unofficial anthem, a hymn of love of country.
by Jill Lepore via National Geographic on November 3, 2020
Langston Hughes signing an autograph surrounded by five other people

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, "poet laureate of Harlem," dreamed of an America that lived up to its ideals.
by Louis P. Masur via The American Scholar on September 8, 2020

Allen Ginsberg at the End of America

The polarized dialogue over Vietnam and the civil rights movement convinced Ginsberg that America was teetering on the precipice of a fall.
by Michael Shumacher via The Paris Review on August 27, 2020
Drawing of two angels flying above Longfellow

What Is There to Love About Longfellow?

He was the most revered poet of his day. It’s worth trying to figure out why.
by James Marcus via The New Yorker on June 1, 2020
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