I’m a fan of narrative poems, poems that tell a story. As I see it, that’s how poetry started, with epic poems that had to be memorized to be passed down, as people didn’t have printing presses or ...

In James Merrill’s Collected Poems, all the “Previously Uncollected Poems” appear bunched together at the end, thus depriving ...

How It Is: Selected Poems by Neil Shepard, Salmon Poetry, 178 pages. $25. Every book is a new adventure — or something like that — but Neil Shepard‘s How It Is: Selected Poems gathers an unusually ...

Reading is writing, writing is reading and it's a good idea not to judge yourself with what you read. Especially poetry for young people. These are things that have helped me throughout the years. I ...

Kids haven't experienced true holiday magic until the first time they hear A Visit from St. Nicholas. That long-form poem makes it so easy to fall in love with kids' Christmas poetry. Give them even ...

If you're anything like me, poetry collections intimidate you more than any other type of book. I'm not sure where this poetry fear starts for many of us. Perhaps from school, where we're expected to ...

Seek advice from others. Another option is to ask a mentor or close friend to hear your short poem and go through it with you.

For our series Making of a Poem, we’re asking poets and translators to dissect the poems they’ve published in our pages.

This week’s guest on "Poetry from Daily Life" is Matt Mason, who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Matt, who was the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024, started writing in high school and not long after ...