Defining the word poem isn’t that simple. Basically, it’s any collection of written or spoken words that have some sort of lyrical quality, rhythm, and/or structure that’s less straightforward than a ...

This year, National Poetry Month brings an ambitious collaboration: a cross-country relay race of 54 poets contributing to one poem about America. The practice is known as renga, an ancient Japanese ...

As a commuter tried to make out the words of Richard C. Shaner’s “Gilman Pond Mountain,” someone walked right over it. Partially funded through a $45,000 grant from the Federal Transit Administration ...

Most mornings, after I make coffee and feed the cat, I sit in the black chair with my oatmeal and read a poem … or two. I savor the words and the sound of the words. It’s a visitation, really. A ...

Clockwise from top left: Walt Whitman, Robert Lowell, Virginia Woolf, Yusef Komunyakaa, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Denise Levertov. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos via Wikimedia Commons. O ...

A new anthology highlights the charms and drawbacks of very brief verse. By Elisa Gabbert I remember where I was when I first read two short poems. One, Margaret Atwood’s “You Fit Into Me” (“you fit ...

The clerihew is named for its inventor, English writer Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who remembered penning his first one as a teenager in school during the 1890s. Its subject was Sir Humphry Davy (which ...