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Quote:

The best life is the life
Lived out unmeasured.

. Unquote.
— Ricard Reis, tr. by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari
Poem

From the magazine:

Proof

By Cornelius Eady
Poem

From the magazine:Sentences

By Dāshaun Washington
Totes Poetry. Totes Yours. text on dark green background surrounding a tote with a leaping Pegasus

Recent Features from Poetry

  • Frank X Walker in profile view

    Prose from Poetry Magazine

    From the magazine:

    Beyond Black Appalachia

    By Megan Pillow

    Affrilachian evolution and postcolonial community in the poetry of Frank X Walker.

  • Prose from Poetry Magazine

    From the magazine:

    “They Seeded Themselves”

    By Kelly Norman Ellis

    On Frank X Walker and the power of Affrilachian gatherings.

Hard Feelings Essays

Various expressive faces, in frames, against a pink background.

Prose from Poetry Magazine

From the magazine:On Self-Loathing: My Particular Involvement

By Jameson Fitzpatrick

When, long after puberty had done its work, I was finally able to re-admit my original understanding of myself to myself, I saw my self-loathing in a new light. 

Prose from Poetry Magazine

By Willie Perdomo

I’ve heard it said that if poets are not writing about death, they’re not writing about anything; the same could be said for love. 

Prose from Poetry Magazine

From the magazine:On Shame: In the Realm of Death and Awe

By Elaine Kahn

My writing was not more important to me than my wish to have a family. And this is the well from which much of my shame flowed.

Prose from Poetry Magazine

From the magazine:On Neediness: Midnight Chimes

By Will Harris

What other kind of writer puts so much stock in the quasi-religious notion of a calling or a vocation? 

From the Poetry Magazine Archive

  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Mirror

    By Rita Dove
    Mirror,
    take this
    from
    me:
    my blasted gaze,
    sunken
    astonishment. Resolve
    memory & rebuild; shame’ll
    dissolve
    under powder pressed into
    my skin.

    Oh, avalanche, my harbor:
    can I
    look
    over you;
    pit & pustule, crease & blotch
    without seeing
    you through you—
    if all I am
    (Am I all?)
    is Woe is
    me?
    Mirror,
    this take
    from
    me:
    gaze blasted, my
    sunken
    resolve, astonishment.
    Shame’ll rebuild & memory
    dissolve
    into...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    Triptych for Topological Heart

    By Alice Fulton
     it befalls us. an exchanged glance, reflective spasm.


    Is it a fantastically unlaminated question set in flesh
    or valentine that wears the air as its apparel?
    If you cut a heart from parchment, is it still
    a heart? A nontrivial knot, where turns of...
  • Poem

    From the magazine:

    West Altadena

    By Jessica Abughattas
    Neighbors
    pass, two lines of smoke
    in hooded sweatshirts,

    from the sober living house
    next door, as I stand in the front yard
    watering dirt.

    I ask little of the garden—
    mere inspiration—working
    my shovel into bare earth.

    While witnesses in neckties
    carry scriptures, county sheriff
    circles the block.

    A couple fights
    in...

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Poetry was founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912.

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