Occoquan’s Nights of Terror
In this week of International Women’s Day, poet Philip C. Kolin remembers the courage of US women in demanding the right to vote.
poetry
I’m No Martian
HEY FELLA WOULD YOU MIND HOLDING THIS PIANO A MOMENT
The Brooklyn poet William J. Harris has something to say about guilt by association as so many of your own best friends have been accused.
A Pageant of America in 52 Poems
Portside
Each state appears here in alphabetical order. With a poem for the District of Columbia, and a poem serving as Preface, 52 poems. But This Land invites (and even demands) that its organization and its meanings be constructed by each reader.
poetry
A Group of Rats Is Referred to as a Mischief
Salt Poetry Journal
For poet Joseph Zaccardi, the Vietnam war lingers in memory for the fear it wrought among soldiers, but also the loss of camaraderie “after all these/years scattered across American towns and cities…”
poetry
In Ukraine
San Francisco poet Beau Beausoleil reminds us that the war in Ukraine goes on, people are dying, all obscured by political shadows and dubious communications.
books
The Legacy of a Caged Bird
Los Angeles Review of Books
During his lifetime, Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American, was among the most famous poets in the United States. It is one of the great paradoxes of the early Jim Crow era. This biography sheds new light on the writer's life and work.
poetry
A New Kind of Anthem
On Veterans Day, we honor Gerald Sloan’s poem, commissioned by a local symphony to be recited at a choral performance of Wilfred Owen's famous sonnet (see below).
poetry
Behind the Wall
Rattle
“The debts we make are never paid, for us behind the wall,” write the incarcerated poet Cory Lambing, offering a glimpse of what it’s like to be inside.
books
The Democracy Walt Whitman Wanted
The New Republic
A new book argues that Whitman’s celebration of fellow feeling could unite America today.
Talking to Strangers by Peter Neill Carroll
Big City Lit
Carroll is drawn to the eccentric and the oddball. In sinuous free verse, he limns a series of arresting anecdotes, few longer than a page, as he searches for Homo Americanus.
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