The Underglimmer
“What would the objects around us look like if we were centered, open?”—an essay by John Wall Barger
All posts filed under: Essays
Prose that encourages us to engage with books of poetry, individual poets, and issues of craft or poetics.
Everywhere Is [Beautifully] Dreamed in the Poetry of Sherwin Bitsui: A Critical Found Response
“Origin is first origin”—an essay by Natalie A. MartĂnez
Repair
“It isn’t enough to hold someone’s sorrow in your body till it ferments into song. Witnessing isn’t enough. You must become the sorrow.”—an essay by Claudia F. Saleeby Savage
There’s the Overthrow and There’s the Rebuild
“Poems don’t replace the organizing—they supplement it.”—an essay by Troy Osaki
A Forecast of Snow: Love in bpNichol’s Blues
“It’s love, but slanted, in slow motion.”—an essay by Julia Anna Morrison
The Pursuit of It: Maggie Nelson’s On Freedom
“Who does stasis serve?”—an essay by Gabrielle Bates
I Am Ready To Be Every Animal You Leave Behind
“Vuong shows the world for the truth of all its sharp and beautiful teeth.” —a visual essay Tessa Hulls
A THOUSAND IMAGINATIONS: What the Books of Alberto RĂos Say to Each Other
“Perhaps conversations among RĂos’ works are most evident in the ones about the border, where the elbow taps of solidarity acknowledge the tenuous ground upon which an idea that becomes a fence that becomes a wall is built.”—an essay by Donna Miscolta
Getting Out of the Way: The Quiet Poem
“By simplifying language, diction, detail, a poem can transcend the ‘lean moment’ and brush up against an intimate and unshakable truth.”—an essay by D.S. Waldman
A Book in a Tree Is a Love Poem and Also Not a Love Poem
“A watershed of shared thinking.”—Youth Responses to Natalie Diaz curated by Laura Da’