Ten Years of Writing about Poetry Has Taught Me This

From the archives

Poetry is the most textured form of writing. It attracts artists who weave sounds and images with mystery. They may be cranky (T. S. Eliot) or homesick (Seamus Heaney) or humorous (Billy Collins). They may believe that poetry is an instrument … Read More

“To look closely with the attention of questioning changes everything.”

img_2667“It is,” Jane Hirshfield writes in this collection of essays about poetry, “if undertaken fully, revolutionary.”  More stimulating than a triple-shot of espresso, these essays show what can happen when a great poet sets out to describe how poetry is primarily “an instrument of investigation and a mode of perception.” … Read More