Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: October 2019

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Excerpts

We Were Born in a World with Predators: Featured Poetry by Rose McLarney

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If poetry, as an art, slows us down, then McLarney's poems slow us and sink us and rejuvenate our sense of the surrounding world.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: September 2019

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Eight new and notable collections you want on your nightstand this month, including work by a lost Catalan master and the latest from our new poet laureate.
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Excerpts

The Space Between Silence & Enough: Featured Poetry by Nick Flynn

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In "St. Augustine," the final poem in Flynn's excellent new book, we feel the narrator’s conversation with the past, doubt and faith giving breath to each other.
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The Millions Interview

B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners

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Mysteries aren’t something to be solved, but something to be embraced. We don’t need to conquer; we just need to be curious. For me, that’s where the revelation lives—in the not-knowing.
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Excerpts

Holy in the Hands of Old Oak: Featured Poetry by Alexandra Teague

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Teague is as skilled moving among phrases and sounds as she is portraying bodies and our ineffable drift through this world.
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The Millions Interview

Little Islands of Faith: The Millions Interviews Tupelo Hassman

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To my mind, Catholicism has many of the prettiest and most satisfying ways of evidencing faith. Because we want to touch it, don’t we?
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: August 2019

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Six new collections we're looking forward to digging into this month, including one that's unlike any book of poetry that you’ll read this year.
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Excerpts

This Is Our Intimacy Now: Featured Poetry by Carmen Giménez Smith

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Giménez Smith's poems often reflect a narrator's childhood memory or perspective—and these glimpses into the past help sharpen the present.
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Excerpts

My Poem Will Not Save You: Featured Poetry by Dunya Mikhail

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Full of gently-delivered lines that rumble with resonance, Mikhail's poems are worth pondering and leave readers with much to carry forward.
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The Millions Interview

John Zada Is Still Searching for Sasquatch

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The journalist and photographer on how a boyhood preoccupation turned into a book-length adventure story about the American Bigfoot, in all its forms.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: July 2019

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“I was born—don’t know the hour— / Slapped on the ass / And handed over crying / To someone many years dead / In a country no longer on a map.”
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Excerpts

Get on Your Knees Again: Featured Poetry by Mark Yakich

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Our series of poetry excerpts continues with Spiritual Exercises by Mark Yakich, a writer who always feels one line away from a joke or an epiphany.
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Essays

A Meditation on Exclamation Marks in Contemporary Poetry (!)

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For all their ubiquity in texts and emails, exclamation marks call attention toward themselves in poems: they stand straight up.
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The Millions Interview

Celebrity Culture and the Mechanics of Fame

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It’s the interactions of media, the public, and stars that create celebrity culture, and those interactions are dynamic and unpredictable.
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Excerpts

Whatever Dirt or Blemish Upon Her Name: Featured Poetry by Eugene Gloria

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Our series of poetry excerpts continues with a poem from Gloria's new book, a skilled and fevered examination of strife in the Philippines & the U.S.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: June 2019

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Excerpts

Even the Sun Itself Has Faded: Featured Poetry by Norman Dubie

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There’s an irreverent touch to his lines, but the language is painfully precise—with an unnerving feel, as if we are looking at the world with new eyes.
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