There is a poignancy in Natasha Trethewey’s “History Lesson” that I find irresistible – it is beautiful and evocative and sad and triumphant all at once. I think that what I appreciate the most is how she says so much – about an important relationship, about memory, about...

I don’t know what made me think of this poem today. Perhaps it’s that we’re moving into the days of high school graduations, when 17 and 18 year-olds venture out into the world ready to seek out a job, serve their country, or venture into the territory of higher education, or...

Stephen Crane made his literary mark at age 23 with his brilliant book on war, The Red Badge of Courage. Though he was rejected for service for poor health, Crane saw more than his fair share of the horrors of war as a correspondent covering conflicts in Greece, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Cuba....

“I write poems to figure things out.” Sarah Kay’s words are as true of the stories we tell each other (and ourselves) as they are of poetry. Sarah entered – actually was entered by someone else (to this day she doesn’t know who) – a spoken poetry contest at the age of fourteen, and...

John Donne’s “A Hymn to the Father” was one of the first poems that I really came to appreciate. I think it’s because it names something that seems to permeate so much of the religious life – I’d say in our time and land, but apparently it was so in Donne’s time as well: fear....