Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series. Despite the ubiquity of the usage, it was not always so: John Dryden and Alexander Pope did not speak of a poet’s ...

April is National Poetry Month. To celebrate and inform, here is a list of 10 of the best and most influential living Black poets. Furthermore, we’ve included the title of some of the most famous work ...

Bob Gossom film closes National Poetry Month and opens Mental Health Awareness Month His vision and imagery leap from ...

Joseph Parisi, Editor of 100 Essential Modern Poems, and Kathleen Welton have selected these remarkable poems by women writing over the past 150 years in the English language. You will find Emily ...

Hanif Abduraqqib. Sarah Kay. Elizabeth Acevedo. Clint Smith. Do any of these names sound familiar? How about Amanda Gorman? All of these writers are part of America’s thriving contemporary poetry ...

If you want to make Stephen Sondheim mad enough to swat you over the head with a rolled-up musical score, try this: Call him a poet. As Sondheim insists in interviews, essays and in the introduction ...

Memorable lines: If I lost you/the air wouldn't move, nor the tree grow/Someone would pull the weed, my flower/The quiet wouldn't be yours. If I lost you/I'd have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

Some days the hardest thing in the world is explaining Chicago to someone not from Chicago. Other days, particularly when you already live here, the hardest thing is seeing the city clearly, as vast ...

Poets frequently pay homage to nature — whether it be to the single sprouting cherry blossom or the blade of grass that bends toward the sun. Words, much like nature, glisten with the beauty and ...