Mark Doty at Readers' Books in Sonoma, California, after the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir Dog Years (Photo courtesy the author) Finding a memorable contemporary poem about Christmas is a lot like discovering a jaw-dropping piece of Christmas music. In other words, the task [...]
Janlori Goldman It's hard to believe that the winter solstice is this week. For residents of the Northern Hemisphere, December 21st is both the longest night, and the shortest day, depending on your perspective. On December 21st, there will be 24 hours of daylight south of the Antarctic [...]
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz with poet Taylor Mali at the WordXWord Festival in Massachusetts Thanks to all of the readers who have contributed to the Gwarlingo Membership Drive. Just over $4000 of the $15,000 goal has been raised in the first three days, which has exceeded my expectations. [...]
Poet Caitlin Doyle (Photo by Mike Robinson) Rhyme is tricky business for a contemporary poet. In an environment where free-verse dominates, how can a writer make a traditional technique like rhyme meaningful and innovative, and not simply a hollow, reactionary gesture against the status-quo? Poet Caitlin Doyle [...]
Poet W.S. Merwin I want to wish you and your loved ones a belated Happy Thanksgiving this Sunday. This holiday I'm exceedingly grateful to you for reading Gwarlingo and to all of the artists and poets who have contributed work to the site. In gratitude I have [...]
Anzhelina Polonskaya I first met Russian poet Anzhelina Polonskaya several years ago at the MacDowell Colony, where many of the poems in her new collection, Paul Klee’s Boat, were written. While in New Hampshire, Anzhelina graciously offered to share her work at a local poetry event. She [...]
Poet Bruce Snider Bruce Snider's latest poetry collection, Paradise, Indiana, is a book steeped in place, from Midwestern farms, to taxidermy conventions, to interstates dotted with roadkill, to the Pick 'N Save, where the narrator's grandmother shoplifts. Reading the collection sequentially, a moving narrative unfolds about adolescent love and [...]
Poet Martha Collins (Photo by Doug Macomber) As a five-year-old boy, Martha Collins' father sold fruit in front of the Blue Front Restaurant in Cairo, Illinois. One November day in 1909, he was lifted onto a relative's shoulders to watch a bloodthirsty mob of 10,000 people kill [...]
Poet James Arthur (Photo by Sean Hill) "That feeling of becoming a new person in a different place, even if it's an illusion, is intoxicating to me, and always has been," says poet James Arthur. "I love writing about places, but only places where I don't belong." James's [...]
Bruce A. Jacobs The Sunday Poem is back! Apologies to readers who missed the poem in their inbox last weekend. I appreciate your emails and messages. It's good to know that the series has become such an integral part of your weekend and that you genuinely look [...]
Poet, art critic, and curator John Yau was born in Lynn, Massachusetts to Chinese emigrants. Like a painter obsessed with the physicality of paint, Yau takes pleasure in words as words. His poetry is playful, surprising, and pushes the limits of language. “I do not speculate about ceaseless [...]
Poet Jean Valentine (Photo © Star Black courtesy Star Black) No one has captured the essence of Jean Valentine's poetry as eloquently as the late writer Adrienne Rich: "Looking into a Jean Valentine poem is like looking into a lake: you can see your own outline, and [...]
Last Day in Coldwater Our phone died due to lack of payment. I left her a note and trudged down the gray splintered stairs. She was sleeping the weekly sleep of the dead, the morning crash after the stairs burned down beneath her. After days of [...]
Joan Murray (Photo by David Lee) Today's Sunday Poem is a special excerpt from poet Joan Murray's project The Visitor: Poems from the Eastman House. The last time I saw Joan she was working on this series of poems at The MacDowell Colony. I asked Joan to [...]
(Note: Today’s Sunday Poem is part of Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series and is made possible by The Poetry Foundation This one is for all of the gardeners out there!) By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen [...]
New poetry publications have been piling up in my post office box, a sure sign that the fall book season is here. One of the best surprises that's appeared in my mail in recent weeks is Copper Canyon's When My Brother Was an Aztec by poet Natalie Diaz. Diaz, a member [...]
For Geof I'm eighty-four now. Now I know what I Should have done. After the war I should Have stayed in the army. And now I'd be A retired sergeant or captain with a pension Much bigger than social security. Instead All those years of [...]
Frank O'Hara by Alice Neel, 1960. Oil on canvas (85.7 x 40.6 x 2.5 cm). Gift of Hartley S. Neel. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. © Estate of Alice Neel. Art critic and New York School poet Frank O'Hara studied piano at the New England Conservatory in Boston [...]
God Quest And when I have toilet paper I say thank you toilet paper god and when I have food I say thank you food god. Clothes: thank the clothes' god, shoes and accessories- thank the same god. For lifts: the elevator god, and wine- the [...]
Ecuadorian poet, historian, author, and diplomat Jorge Carrera Andrade "The images of Jorge Carrera Andrade are so extraordinarily clear, so connected to the primitive I imagine I am...participating in a vision already lost to the world. It is a place melancholy but grand." — William Carlos Williams [...]
The late poet Adrienne Rich during her student days at Radcliffe (Photo courtesy Harvard University and the Radcliffe Archive) The Sunday Poem returns today after a two-week hiatus. Thanks to all of you who wrote and told me how much you missed receiving the Sunday Poem in your [...]
I'm excited to share this special expanded edition of Gwarlingo's Sunday Poem series with you. The Utopia Minus Project is an art and poetry collaboration that has been in the works for nearly twelve months now. Poet Susan Briante and visual artist Margaret Lanzetta have [...]
Translating haiku seems like a natural fit for Robert Hass, a United States Poet Laureate and recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for poetry. Hass says he likes poems that "get to the point." In the below video, [...]
Sam the Super You wouldn’t take my bald father for a quirky man, since his bearing is quintessentially Tamil-Brahmin, a Tam-Bram for the uninitiated, with the firmest hand when it comes to discipline or studies. He leers at ham and beer alike. Believes [...]
Missing If I told you simply that the bed in the Baptist Hospital Last occupied by Cora Stokes is empty again, And the patient didn’t go home, you’d be likely Not to feel much interest. So I’m adding here The news that she’s gone missing, that [...]