Every year, since 2014, I’ve set aside a couple of months to sit down with what amounts to a long shelf of books of poetry published in the past twelve months. My goal is to take stock of the art.

As I have every year since 2014, in 2025 I set aside a couple of months to peruse the year’s books of poetry — at least those books I had on hand. In the past, I’ve titled my annual roundup — one ...

I remember the first time I picked up Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends in my elementary school library. It was filled with delightfully clever and funny rhymes, and the words danced off my ...

A poem a day keeps the mind at play. That's the beauty of picking up a poetry collection: There's no pressure to read the book cover-to-cover. Readers can take it slow, savoring the verse and emotion.

What exactly constitutes a poem? To some contemporary writers, one might consider a shopping list of milk, eggs, oats and tea a form of poetry. Classicists will look towards narrative epics by the ...