Two Poems
by David Lehman • from Yeshiva Boys • Scribner
Featured Poet
David LehmanDavid Lehman is the founder and series editor of The Best American Poetry, now in its twenty-second year, and editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry.
Featured Book
Yeshiva Boys"[These poems] are intelligent, wry, and sometimes lacerating in their moments of melancholic tenderness." (Mary Jo Bang)
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
MORE
"Poems about superheroes, famous or obscure, announce their divorce from expectations about high culture, antiquity, "academic" difficulty. At the same time, the same poems can draw an analogy between the cultural space of contemporary poetry and the referential mythos in which superheroes, and their super-readers, move. We read comics when we are ten, or twelve, or sixteen, and discover that our peers, at some point, expect us to set them aside; we write poetry, for ourselves and for our friends and for our classmates and teachers in poetry workshops, through college—and then we discover that the adult world has much less room for it. Contemporary poetry, in other words, looks now (it never looked quite this way to Jarrell, nor to Bowers) like a subculture, or a fan culture, pursued in adult life by devoted amateurs and struggling professionals who know that most people, most serious readers (of literary novels) find little time and less use for it in their adult lives."
—Stephen Burt MORE
Follow PD on Twitter!
We'll keep you posted on key events and news as they happen.
And sign up for our free weekly e-mail newsletter!
Get complete details about upcoming featured poets, news and reviews from around the world of poetry, information from PD sponsors and a poem selected from the Poetry Daily archive...
Poet and sound artist Caroline Bergvall reads 48 versions of the opening lines of Dante's Inferno.
Sapphire is among this year's winners of the United States Artists Awards.
Ted Kooser introduces a poem by Ben Vogt.
Michael Chitwood reviews Fred Chappell's Shadow Box and Robert Morgan's October Crossing.
In Andy Fuller's film, Binhad Nurrohmat's poem "The People on the KRL," is read by a young worker on the Indonesian train line.
David Biespiel introduces John Donne's Holy Sonnet XIV.
Carol Rumens introduces a poem by Grace Nichols.
The PSA's Poetry in Motion returns (on Manhattan buses this time).
Ian McMillan with poets David Harsent and Eleanor Rees, and academic Danny Karlin on a French version of Robert Browning's "The Ring and the Book," written under Nazi occupation.
Peggy Reynolds looks into the stories behind John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer."
National Book Award winner, Keith Waldrop, in conversation with Christopher Lyden.
Robert Dunbar offers his list of the year's best children's poetry.
John Ashbery's Planisphere reviewed by Helen Vendler.
Heather McHugh introduces her poem, "Domestique."
Sarah Crown's top poetry collections for 2009.
Book indusrty reaction to the demise of Kirkus Reviews. MORE
Where Ryan meets Shakespeare meets Ashbery meets Dove meets...
As Poetry Out Loud moves from local to state-wide competitions around the country, you can explore the riches available to the competitors in choosing poems to recite. Browse the competition's online archive of poems and search for your own favorites on the POL poems page, or check the POL home page daily for the day's featured poet.
Presented by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and their State Arts Agency partners
Just Received: New Collections By
- David Lehman
- David Lehman, David Wagoner, ed.s
- Molly Peacock, A.F. Moritz, ed.s
- MORE
