Poetry Makes Nothing Happen? Ask Laura Bush

So Laura Bush will not, after all, be discussing the works of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes with a selected group of American poets at the White House on February 12.

Katha Pollitt

The Rest of Love

The hive is for where
the honey was.
Was findable there,

then not.
Sometimes, I think I dreamed it,
or I am saying it like a thing

Carl Phillips

Frederick Seidel of St. Louis

Frederick Seidel of St. Louis, Missouri, is probably the last American decadent–certainly he is the most distinguished.

Robyn Creswell

‘Obscure as That Heaven of the Jews’

In the rabbi’s parable a lame one climbs
Onto a blind one’s shoulders and together
They take the fruit of the garden of the Lord.

Robert Pinsky

Wheeling My Father Through the Alzheimer’s Ward

Here where everyone forgets everything,
including where they are
or what they are fighting to remember,

Edward Hirsch

The Call of the Junco Bird

An English woman I’ve never met
calls to read me her new poem
about the little Texas junco bird
whose cry sounded to the early settlers

Edward Hirsch

‘The Heart’s Garden’

The day that Kenneth Rexroth died was not a dark, cold day.

John Palattella

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

Martín Espada

Birthday Poem

Lynne McMahon

‘Blue Clear Down’

John Palattella