Morgan Parker's new poetry collection explores the ways African-American lives are affected by historical events, even though they may have happened decades or centuries ago.
Hala Alyan reflects on three decades of life in an intimate, unsparing new poetry collection that offers a unique look at life as a Palestinian in exile, a woman, and a young person looking for love.
Through the arc of the poet's career, Craig Morgan Teicher shows that while we are often too distracted to appreciate each other and our universe — poetry demands that we pause and listen.
The National Endowment for the Arts says that since its last survey period in 2012, the number of U.S. adults reading poetry had nearly doubled. And the agency says social media may be responsible.
Allan Monga of Portland, Maine recently won the right to compete in the national Poetry Out Loud festival. He was initially barred because he's an asylum seeker and not a U.S. citizen.
Allan Monga won Maine's Poetry Out Loud competition last month, but the NEA barred him from the national stage because of his immigration status. Now he's suing for his right to participate.
It's been a whirlwind week in Washington, D.C., with news about Syria, the Russia investigation and Scott Pruitt's spending at the EPA. NPR's Scott Simon sums it all up, with a poem.
Many of the books of poems coming out this year are sad, but also powerful; full of poets processing their lives, looking into pains both personal and political through the cracked glass of poetry.
Akbar, a poet himself, waves his pom poms for the form at DiveDapper, a site dedicated to in-depth interviews with his favorite poets. He says he wants to live his life "in joyful service" to poetry.
For Ward, who won the fiction prize for Sing, Unburied, Sing, it was her second National Book Award. For Bidart, whose poetry collection spanned 51 years, it was akin to a lifetime achievement honor.
His commitment to traditional forms, with tight patterns and taut construction, stood out among his contemporaries. He said his craft was finding order in pain and chaos — not creating it.
The National Book Foundation winnowed the list of contenders for its literary prize to just 20 — or five finalists each in four categories. Among them are Jesmyn Ward, Min Jin Lee and Frank Bidart.
Years of treating grievously injured people starts to wear on a person, a trauma nurse in Minneapolis says. She explores "compassion fatigue" in a semi-autobiographical poem.
After an incorrect dose of a chemotherapy drug for Crohn's disease caused Anne Webster's bone marrow to shut down, she decided that, if she survived, she'd write about her experience.
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. NPR met with Herrera on World Poetry Day, March 21, 2017, to talk about the role of poetry in society.
