In clear, resonate language, Li-Young Lee celebrates longing in his poem “I Loved You Before I Was Born.” In its repetition and earnestness, this poem reminds me of e. e. cumming’s poem “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in.” Unlike cumming’s poem though, Lee’s emphasizes the bitter-sweetness of longing and places it…

Ashley Wong’s poem “Post-Miracle” begins with empathy for the hard-hearted: “I understand now how the disciples could touch thousands / of pieces of bread with their hands and still not get it…” Without sentimentality, Wong describes the transience of a miracle and places us within this specific moment, the space after a miracle. The speaker…

Lot’s wife, or what’s left of her, stands in the barren wilderness outside Sodom waiting to trip up any who would skip merrily through the Old Testament, seeing God only as creator, provider, and oh-so-merciful father. It’s no wonder that so many poets—with their obnoxious preference for the prophetic—have invited her into their lines to…

We sang it, too. In 1961, Mr. D taught our fourth grade music class folk songs belonging to our American musical heritage. I still know all the tunes and most lyrics to “Shenandoah,” “Ol’ Dan Tucker,” “Erie Canal,” “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” “Barbara Allen,” “Red River Valley.” And the minstrel song, “Shortnin’ Bread.” Complete with…

This is the time of year when I anxiously wait for flowers to reappear. Our valley’s famous tulip fields that are now in full bloom, the show-stopping roses by the front door, and the dramatic yet fleeting peonies that outline our garden beds. We also have a hydrangea outside the living room window and I…

I love this poem because it mirrors the passing of time, patiently guiding readers through the speaker’s perspectives on truth. The structure of the poem resembles a list, providing four metaphors for how truth moves in the world. The poem’s relationship with truth is a relationship characterized by time and movement. Even before we reach…

Wakefield’s poem presents the metaphor of a peach as the speaker’s body: “I’ll let the sun singe the peach, / my flesh, luxurious, ruined.” The image of the body as a soft fruit blurs the boundaries between human and nature, planting identity within context. In this way, “To Begin With” reminds me of Mark Strand’s…

Throughout her poetry, Pattiann Rogers observes and describes the natural world with profound detail, compassion, and awe. In fact, Rogers will be awarded the John Burroughs Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Nature Poetry next month. In “Manifest, by Reason of Birth” she writes, “The universe / thrives / and pulses, rumbles and roars, sings, explodes,…

If you write poetry, odds are you don’t expect your work to achieve acclaim like that of a Robert Frost or a Mary Oliver. You consider yourself most fortunate if, now and then, you find a publisher and an audience who connect with your sensibility. There are moments, many of them, when you question why…

How to image good and evil? It’s hard to do in a way that astounds us afresh with how they penetrate every aspect of our lives. Yet Jeanne Murray Walker manages to do this in “God Reads the Poem of the World with Interest.” Evil is terrifyingly concrete: men setting a boy’s mother on fire…