Summer Reads
Some recent favorite features from poetryfoundation.org.
BY The Editors
As much of the country remains in the clutches of a heat wave, we find ourselves daydreaming of languorous, leisurely activities. For us, that always includes reading. We have chosen six of our favorite Poetry Foundation features—from an essay on Rosemary Tonks, a British poet who abruptly dropped out of literary life at the height of her career, to a deeply relevant and resonant consideration of issues of class in the poetry world.
“There are few questions in life that interest me that have definitive answers,” Maggie Nelson tells Emily Gould in their lively conversation. We hope the features here encourage you to explore such deep questions while enjoying the last month of summer.
Essay
The Writing Class
On privilege, the AWP-industrial complex, and why poetry doesn’t seem to matter.
Essay
As Ever
The letters of Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti chart a 40-year friendship and two storied careers.
Essay
The Disappearance of Rosemary Tonks
Praised by the likes of Philip Larkin, Tonks was a writer to be reckoned with. Why did she vanish?
Essay
The Long Goodbye
In which our reporter falls for Frank Stanford's poetry, heads for the lost roads of Arkansas, and searches for the man behind the myth.
Essay
Sleep as Resistance
Hejinian, Whitman, and the politics of sleep.
The editorial staff of the Poetry Foundation. See the Poetry Foundation staff list and editorial team masthead.