On June 27, 2025, I was at British Summer Time Hyde Park, a festival in London, with my friends Emma and Ally. When I tell you I had an absolutely dynamite time, I am not exaggerating in the least– it was so fun walking around the festival grounds, seeing the sea of people full of…
Jeffery Harrison’s poem “Amnesia,” describes a scene that most people reading the poem can easily immerse themselves in. A moment of remembering something, but it being on the tip of your tongue— a memory you can almost reach, yet one that becomes murky once specific details are required. Harrison was born in Cincinnati in 1957…
Here in Connecticut, I breathe in cold air; I breathe in the dying leaves that fill the sidewalk; I breathe in the freezing Long Island Sound. In Ormond Beach, Florida, I exhale. I love Ormond Beach so much…like so much. I love the way the sun turns my skin golden as I sit in the…
Since I was a child my head was filled with stories of princes and princesses, knights and vast castles, kings and queens ruling over their lands. Five year old me was truly happiest, thinking that happy endings always existed in the world. I will say television and books really fed my impressionable little mind, but…
Brad Leithauser’s “A Good List” describes many things he has never done. He wrote the poem while living in Iceland during a snowstorm, and the end result is a piece that he still laughs about. Born on April 3, 1943, in Traverse City, Michigan, Leithauser, a Harvard-educated poet, has produced many poems, essays, and novels.…
“[T]his is the magic of fragments—the way that poem breaks off leads into a thought that can’t ever be apprehended. There is the space where a thought would be, but which you can’t get hold of. I love that space. It’s the reason I like to deal with fragments. Because no matter what the thought…
Louise Glück was a poet who created art out of words. She wrote many books which won many awards, most famously the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of her pieces were written based on her life. She lost her father, went through two divorces, and often struggled with her self-identity. In her early teenage years,…
For as long as I can remember, I have had a great interest in mystery and hidden meanings; they have always been a subject that intrigues me and makes me want to know more or even solve it. When I read the title of the poem “Morning on the Island” by Carolyn Forché, I found…
When reading the poem “I Do Not Know Myself” by Hugh Seidman, I felt a sense of loneliness. The poem itself explores ideas of identity and belonging, and challenges the reader to think about their basic human existence and refers to the topic of discovering one’s self. This is a topic I can relate to,…
Are you all right? This is a question we get asked more than one can count. People ask this thinking that it is a simple yes or no question when, in reality, it is so complex. “The Wrong Question” was written by the poet Tony Hoagland. His poems incorporate topics about serious issues, but were…