Laurels for Ange Mlinko

Laurels for Ange Mlinko

Poet and Nation contributor Ange Mlinko has won the Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism for work that is “eclectic and astringent yet always lucid and generous.”

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

We are pleased to report that the Poetry Foundation announced today that Ange Mlinko, a poet and frequent contributor to the literary pages of The Nation, is the recipient of the Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism. The foundation praised Mlinko for criticism that “is eclectic and astringent yet always lucid and generous. We are pleased to recognize a young critic whose distinctive sharp wit and formidable power have helped revitalize the art of writing about poetry.” We couldn’t agree more.

In her pieces for The Nation, Mlinko has focused on poets who are passionate observers of the onrush of modern life and its roiling antinomies, whose ungovernable minds prize doubt and whose poems are quickened by verbal play. For Mlinko, poets like Helen Adam, Emily Dickinson and Fanny Howe often wrestle with the question of a poet’s social place or responsibility during times of war and other public agonies, yet they don’t think that poetry is merely an intellectual discourse about culture: it’s not journalism or sociology or political theory written with line breaks. They are neither nihilists who sneer at a meaningless world nor aesthetes who wall off that world with formal masonry. They believe poetry possesses evanescent powers of salvage and rejuvenation.

Mlinko was born in Philadelphia and educated at St. John’s College and Brown University. She is the author of two volumes of poetry, Matinees (1999) and Starred Wire (2005), which was a National Poetry Series winner in 2004 and a finalist for the James Laughlin Award the following year. Congratulations, Ange.

Criticism by Ange Mlinko:

Helen Adam: A Nurse of Enchantment

Emily Dickenson’s White Heat

A Nameless Vocation: On Fanny Howe

Be part of 160 years of confronting power 


Every day,
The Nation exposes the administration’s unchecked and reckless abuses of power through clear-eyed, uncompromising independent journalism—the kind of journalism that holds the powerful to account and helps build alternatives to the world we live in now. 

We have just the right people to confront this moment. Speaking on Democracy Now!, Nation DC Bureau chief Chris Lehmann translated the complex terms of the budget bill into the plain truth, describing it as “the single largest upward redistribution of wealth effectuated by any piece of legislation in our history.” In the pages of the June print issue and on The Nation Podcast, Jacob Silverman dove deep into how crypto has captured American campaign finance, revealing that it was the top donor in the 2024 elections as an industry and won nearly every race it supported.

This is all in addition to The Nation’s exceptional coverage of matters of war and peace, the courts, reproductive justice, climate, immigration, healthcare, and much more.

Our 160-year history of sounding the alarm on presidential overreach and the persecution of dissent has prepared us for this moment. 2025 marks a new chapter in this history, and we need you to be part of it.

We’re aiming to raise $20,000 during our June Fundraising Campaign to fund our change-making reporting and analysis. Stand for bold, independent journalism and donate to support The Nation today.

Onward, 

Katrina vanden Heuvel 
Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x