Poetry

Immortality Immortality

There are killer weeds, deep in the flower patch,
down at the bottom of the tombstone.
Only they'll seem to breed out of the ground itself.

Jun 26, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Robert Mazzocco

Passport: A Manifesto Passport: A Manifesto

This is your passport I hold in my hand:
a hemisphere, half red ink, half blue--
as yet untorched by terror, but polluted

Jun 12, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Carol Muske-Dukes

When Poetry Was the Rage When Poetry Was the Rage

"That was a benefit shooting." So said a shaken Kenneth Koch to a stunned audience seconds after a tall, scraggly man fired a pistol at him on January 10, 1968.

May 29, 2003 / Books & the Arts / John Palattella

She’s So Heavy She’s So Heavy

In 1981 Carolyn Forché published a slim collection of verse, her second, titled The Country Between Us.

May 22, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Meghan O’Rourke

Dead Poets Society Dead Poets Society

It is agonizingly difficult to write about one's hometown as it drowns in flames and suffocates with smoke.

May 8, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Sinan Antoon

Discovery/The Nation ’03 Prizewinners Discovery/The Nation ’03 Prizewinners

The Nation announces the winners of Discovery/The Nation, the Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize of the Unterberg Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y.

May 1, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Various Contributors

The Revell Variations The Revell Variations

How much, in just twenty years, Donald Revell has changed! From the Abandoned Cities (1983), his debut volume, included a villanelle, a sestina, rhymed sonnets and meditative t...

Apr 24, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Stephen Burt

The Little Mermaid’s Fortune-Teller The Little Mermaid’s Fortune-Teller

Refracted through your tide-washed hours, this prince
drifts through algid brine, kelp-wound: his ship has foundered
in your sky. For his sake you discover land, build

Apr 10, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Reginald Shepherd

To the Unfinished To the Unfinished

Clear eminence without whom I would be
nothing oh great provision never seen
barely acknowledged even wished away

Mar 27, 2003 / Books & the Arts / W.S. Merwin

Poets Against the War Poets Against the War

Here The Nation presents a few of the works posted on "Poets Against the War," (www.poetsagainstthewar.org), the website set up by Sam Hamill, poet and editor, when he ca...

Feb 19, 2003 / Books & the Arts / Alfred Corn, Sam Hamill, W.S. Merwin, Maxine Kumin, and Rita Dove

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