North Korea fascinates a world bored with so many bland, decent-enough democracies. Cowered by the tubby tyrant Kim Jong-un, the nation’s 25 million citizens struggle to make do in a system that’s so handcuffed by sanctions, so... Read More

That the greatest poets receive sudden flashes of inspiration is demoralizing to mere mortals. Already so rich in talent, such poets don’t need—or deserve—the metaphorical lightning strike to the ink-filled rods that they wield to... Read More

Stalin: if you’re Russian and of a certain age, his name causes your blood to run Siberian cold. It’s not for nothing that Uncle Joe’s twenty-four-year reign (1929–1953) is frequently called the “other Holocaust”—upwards of... Read More

Eighty poets under the influence of Walt share a poem and a comical pose in this winning collection of portraiture and poetry. That the two complement each other so well in coffee-table format is the unexpected delight. On the Rocks I... Read More

By avoiding cumbersome punctuation and the formality of capitalization, Reuben Jackson lullabies his way into treasured-voice status, quiet yet forceful. A jazz scholar and former curator with the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington... Read More

Jillian Weise identifies as a cyborg. Perhaps that explains her outsized wit, exceptional word skills, and confidence. The author of The Amputee’s Guide to Sex and The Book of Goodbyes, her writing on cyborg identity and disability... Read More

Precise in the language of everyday, rich in wisdom and maturity, Joyce Sutphen’s newest collection, her eighth, speaks to her comfort with farm life, travel, aging, the distortions of memory. Sutphen is Minnesota’s poet laureate and... Read More

The playfulness and creative flourishes showcase the poet having the time of their life in crafting this debut. Recipient of the Editor’s Award in Poetry from The Florida Review, Paige Lewis’s work has appeared in Ploughshares,... Read More