Wondering what to give someone for the holidays? If you”ve still get a few people left on your holiday shopping list, head down to the nearest bookstore and fill their stocking with beautiful words. Here”s a quick selection of some of the best new books of poetry from the past year to help you decide. [...]

I am a lover of poetic forms. Language is music and magic and poetry. Fitting language and meaning together into a set form is like working a puzzle, creating a work of art from scattered thoughts. This is not to say that free verse has no place in poetry – it is very much in [...]

Poetry is sound is poetry. The difference between prose and poetry, according to many of history”s foremost poets, is the way that poetry plays with the ear, the stressed and unstressed accents, the elides and slides from one sound to the next, the staccato rhythm that you can achieve with a series of t-t-t words [...]

Hailed and lauded as the world”s foremost spoken word performance and slam poet, Patricia Smith has easily transcended any label placed on her. Four time National Poetry Slam Champion, Pulitzer Prize nominee, journalist, playwright, poet – her work lifts off the page to take root AND wing, living in a way that many poets dream [...]

You may be wondering what a book of Cole Porter lyrics is doing on a bookshelf devoted to poetry. Lyrics, after all, are often seen as the redheaded stepchild of legitimate poets – which is a darned shame. The best of song lyrics often outshine lyric poetry in their timeliness, artistry and piquancy – and [...]