Discussion Guide
The November 2014 issue of Poetry offers translations from Russian, Korean, Chinese, Welsh, and many other tongues. Uprooted from their languages of origin, the poems consider the very idea of origins, of ...
Articles
Showing 1-20 of 108 articles
Filter Results
- All
- Archive Editor’s Note
- Grantee-Partner Profile
- Poem Sampler
- Learning Prompt
- Foundation News
- Article for Teachers
- Discussion Guide
- Q&A from Poetry Magazine
- Essay
- Article for Students
- Essay on Children's Poetry
- Essay on Poetic Theory
- Press Release
- Prose from Poetry Magazine
- Profile
- Interview
- Comment
- Translator’s Notes
- Poem Guide
- Letter from Poetry Magazine
- Discussion GuideIn the December 2012 issue of Poetry, poems seem to offer solutions to our problems: “Walk with sandals till you get good shoes,” Eliza Griswold instructs in “Libyan Proverbs.” “Learn to shave by shaving orphans...
- Discussion GuideSnips and snipes and witty vitriol: poets are famously skilled at scorning one another. The January 2013 issue of Poetry capitalizes on that talent; a section called “Antagonisms” invites poets to “write short...
- Discussion Guide"The immediate necessity is to tabulate A LIST OF DON’TS for those beginning to write verses," intoned Ezra Pound in "A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste," which appeared in the March 1913 issue of Poetry. A hundred...
- Discussion GuideThe April 2013 issue of Poetry chronicles the tug-of-war between form and content. "Don’t think what you have to say is important," William Logan instructs in "The Nude that Stays Nude," his Ezra Pound-inspired...
- Discussion GuideThe June 2013 issue of Poetry explores the dusty plains, towering mountains, and powerful poetry of contemporary Afghanistan. Writer Eliza Griswold hunted for indigenous lyrics called landays in ...
- Discussion GuideA series of essays in the July/August 2013 issue of Poetry measures the aftershocks of death. Clare Cavanagh, who translates the work of Wislawa Szymborska, imagines that a trick of grammar—the use of present...
- Discussion Guide"Things written by someone who is thinking only of children far too often have an unfortunate tone," notes Lemony Snicket in the September 2013 Poetry. "If you have ever seen an adult hunch over and begin ...
- Discussion Guide"Saying nothing...sometimes says the most," Emily Dickinson wrote her aunt in 1874. As Jen Bervin explains in the November 2013 issue of Poetry, for Dickinson "nothing" didn't mean just anything: "Nothing,...
- Discussion Guide“Old Ark, / how funky it was,” writes Thomas Sayers Ellis in the July/August 2014 Poetry. “All those animals, two of every kind, / and all that waste, the human shit somebody had to clean up.”Like that funky...
- Discussion GuideIn the September 2014 issue of Poetry, writers predict the worst. Kay Ryan darkly alludes to “the unimaginable”; D. Nurkse foretells death and a voyage to Venus, that planet “whipped by circular wind, / choked...
- Discussion Guide“I have many times taken / some cafe’s small packets of sugar,” writes Jane Hirshfield in “Souvenir,” “so that in Turkey / I might sweeten my coffee with China, / and in Italy remember a Lithuanian...
- Discussion GuideIn “Hitting Bottom,” Marilyn Nelson eulogizes Robert and Roberta Poston, the husband and child of African-American sculptor Augusta Savage (1892–1962). Robert, a journalist, perished at sea in 1924...
- Discussion GuideIn “Livelong Day,” Angela Leighton’s description brings a father’s watch to life. The device has “three thin hands”; it’s a “light-tongued creature, touch-ing, touch-ing,” offering “the whisper of a tick.” It’s less...
- Discussion GuideChanda Feldman’s “Money Tree” refers not to the omnipresent indoor plant but to a rarer backyard specimen, one marked by “the wound that made the basketball hoop: / a bicycle’s metal wheel gouged...
- Discussion GuideJane Hirshfield’s “Mountainal” begins as a catalogue of natural wonders: “This first-light mountain, its east peak and west peak. // Its first-light creeks: / Lagunitas, Redwood, Fern.… // Its night...
- Discussion GuideIn “the night I fucked the border patrol agent,” Shivanee Ramlochan, describes the agent’s orgasm as a "small bomb,” a violent event designed to immobilize him—which it does. After having sex with...
- Discussion GuideKhaty Xiong’s “On Teaching My Son How to Mourn” brims with games: a young boy slams his mother’s palm with his fist, imagining his hand is a “butterfly coming home.” He races through the garden, ...
- Discussion Guide“Ooze, oud,” urges Philip Metres in “Song for Refugees”—a poem whose resonant rhymes and rhythms suggest the music of the oud, a pear-shaped lute. He dedicates these stanzas to Mohamad Zatari, a ...
- Discussion Guide“I turned twenty-four and / dad decided to take / another stab at making / a man out of me,” writes Joshua Jennifer Espinoza in “Birthday Suits.” The pair embark on a pointedly masculine shopping...