When the poet Mary Oliver died last week at the age of 83, my social media feeds blossomed into a field of tributes. I was a bit surprised, especially by the posts from some academic poets, because Mary Oliver’s work is simple (at first glance), accessible and bestselling, the antithesis of much poetry written by […]
Poetry
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Self-Portrait in Daylight
![0408[2]](https://www.americamagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/04082-489772-80x80.jpg){kind=avatar}
I wanted to live my life split open, awake
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Instagram poets make me ask: What is good poetry?
Often Instagram poets want to tell the lesson in their writing rather than simply show the reader through sights, sounds, smells, touches and tastes of their lives and stories.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Whose Resolve, Which Salvation?
Their names are legion
where they lay
tunneled beneath our borders.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Great poetry that makes no sense: America’s 2018 Poetry Roundup
And reading poetry, like the books in our 2018 poetry review, can be a great way to not make perfect sense of a thing, but to just be with a thing.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
A spiritual reading of T. S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’
T.S. Eliot attracts and repels all at once—but reading his ‘Four Quartets’ has been a formative experience for many a spiritual seeker.
Posted inArts & Culture, Poetry
Joan of Arc in Her Prison
her wrists are shackled, / her head’s in her hand.
Posted inArts & Culture, Ideas
Meet Atticus, the Instagram poet who never takes off his mask
“Atticus is a storyteller, observer…. He loves the ocean, the desert, whiskey and playing with words.”