Poetry Archive

Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters on Life - At some point in your romantic life, you gave someone --- or, better, someone gave you --- Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet.” Decades later, it no longer embarrasses me

Randall Jarrell - If Randall Jarrell is remembered at all, it's for "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner," a poem you read in high school: From my mother's sleep I fell into the State, And

Raymond Carver: A New Path to the Waterfall - What if you only had a year to live? How would you live it? There’s no easier question. Everyone knows the “right” answer: You live as if there’s no tomorrow. You

Rumi - The greatest Muslim poet was born in what is now Afghanistan, back when Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists lived peacefully together. His funeral lasted 40 days, and he was mourned by Christians,

Seamus Heaney - Seamus Heaney had the Irish gift --- the gift of bullshit --- but he didn’t use words for self-glorification. He was that rare event: a great writer, a great man.

Seamus Heaney: Blackberry-Picking - To read my appreciation of Seamus Heaney on Butler, click here. To buy the paperback of his Selected Poems, click here. To buy the Kindle edition of his Selected Poems, click here. Late

Sharon Olds: Stag’s Leap - In 2012, Sharon Olds won the T.S. Eliot Prize for this book. Then she won the Pulitzer. Now she's won the Wallace Stevens award, which isn't small --- in addition

Sharon Olds: Strike Sparks - Her father is dying, and her plane's been cancelled, but there's another, leaving in just a few minutes, not in this terminal, but it will get her to

Stanley Kunitz - It says a great deal about Stanley Kunitz that he was 95 when he was named Poet Laureate for the second time. First, it reminds us that he lived to

Wislawa Szymborska: Poems New and Collected - It sounds like a Polish joke: Did you hear about the Polish poet who won the Nobel prize? No joke. In 1996, Wislawa Szymborska (l923-2012) won the most money in the