BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 It’s likely that if you found the original handwritten manuscript of T. S. Eliot’s groundbreaking poem, “The Waste Land,” you wouldn’t be able to trade it for a candy bar at the Quick Shop on your corner. Here’s a poem by David Lee Garrison of Ohio about how... »

If You Are Too Stupid To Know When You Aren’t Wanted You Are Too Close To This Shirt »

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 It’s been sixty-odd years since I was in the elementary grades, but I clearly remember those first school days in early autumn, when summer was suddenly over and we were all perched in our little desks facing into the future. Here Ron Koertge of California gives us a... »

It seems that we’ve done just about everything to get the American auto industry out of the doldrums. We’ve forced bankruptcies. We’ve exchanged cash for clunkers. But have we tried poetry? – Op-Ed Contributor – Poetry in Motion – NYTimes.com Ford Edsel, by dstone7y During the 1950s, the Ford Motor Company asked Marianne Moore to... »

Spirit is the name of the next art show at the Warehouse in Norfolk. The organizers say “Spirit” is about illuminating the intangible and viewing the invisible. They are accepting submissions until Sept. 29 and there is no entry fee. »

In response to this in last Sunday’s Parade Magazine insert to the Virginian-Pilot (8-6-09): “Q: Why are my tax dollars going to pay a poet laureate when nobody reads poetry? »

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Jane Hirshfield, a Californian and one of my favorite poets, writes beautiful image-centered poems of clarity and concision, which sometimes conclude with a sudden and surprising deepening. Here’s just one example. Watermelons, by S n o R k e l American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry... »

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 There have been many poems written in which a photograph is described in detail, and this one by Margaret Kaufman, of the Bay Area in California, uses the snapshot to carry her further, into the details of memory. 80’s Collage Project, by Sakurako Kitsa American Life in Poetry is... »

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006 Elizabeth Bishop, one of our greatest American poets, once wrote a long poem in which the sudden appearance of a moose on a highway creates a community among a group of strangers on a bus. Here Ronald Wallace, a Wisconsin poet, gives us a sighting with similar results. ... »