Literature

Poetry

Lost and Forgotten

Although his own writings are little known today, Malcolm Cowley became one of the great champions of American literature.

February 26, 2026 issue

Anthony Domestico

Ever Inward

A biography of the poet Amy Clampitt shows how poetry germinated throughout her life and blossomed in a late-career flourishing.

December 4, 2025 issue

Langdon Hammer

Alert to Reality

The first biography of James Schuyler suggests that his tendency to withdraw was both a harbinger of his disabling mood disorder and the wellspring of his shimmering poetry.

November 20, 2025 issue

Ange Mlinko

Questions of Compression

In their new poetry collections, Peter Balakian’s elliptical notations let his images speak for themselves while Angie Estes’s concentration reveals a rapturous virtuosity.

October 23, 2025 issue

Catherine Nicholson

A Milton for All Seasons

The many radical rereadings of Paradise Lost

March 27, 2025 issue

Mark Ford

Poetry After Flossenbürg

A new biography of Anthony Hecht shows that his life was as various and unexpected as his poems, which evolved from modernist pastiche to extended experiments with the dramatic monologue.

March 13, 2025 issue

Anna Della Subin

‘Her Own Cuneiform’

The poet Dunya Mikhail is preoccupied with Iraq’s urgent present, but she studies it with the care of an archaeologist exhuming relics of the deep past.

May 29, 2025 issue

Sophie Pinkham

The Poet’s Double

In the early years of the Soviet Union, Konstantin Vaginov wrote fiction and poetry characterized by a sense of doubleness, ambiguity, and perverse humor.

March 12, 2026 issue

New Poems

Timothy Donnelly

Ondine

April 9, 2026 issue

Patricia Lockwood

The Beach Where All Babies Are Born

March 26, 2026 issue

Chloe Wilson

Jason Statham Asks Nothing of Me

March 12, 2026 issue

Poets on Poets

Charles Simic

Poems from the Abyss

When asked about his home, Czesław Miłosz said that he came from another planet, another time

November 23, 2017 issue

Dan Chiasson

Crossing the Invisible Line

The astonishing work of poet Eileen Myles set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match.

March 24, 2016 issue

Ange Mlinko

Acts of Extreme Attention

Karen Solie, the consummate poet of the Trans-Canadian Highway, has taken an evolutionary leap with her recent poetry, trading comedy for sublime beauty.

November 21, 2019 issue

John Ashbery

The Book that No One Knows

David Schubert’s poetry is like opening a window in a room that had become stuffy without one’s realizing it.

October 5, 2000 issue

Robert Lowell (1917–1977)

Robert Lowell

A selection of Robert Lowell’s contributions to the New York Review. Read all of his essays here.

Robert Lowell

Waking Early Sunday Morning

August 5, 1965 issue

Robert Lowell

Robert Frost: 1875–1963

February 1, 1963 issue

Robert Lowell

Prometheus Bound derived from Aeschylus

July 13, 1967 issue

The Latest

Ange Mlinko

Mother Daughter Sister Wife

A new anthology of female Hungarian poets engages with the nation’s often tragic history through various forms of reticence, misdirection, and playfulness.

April 9, 2026 issue

Richard Hell, in conversation with Jarrett Earnest

Richard Hell on Godlike and Poetry as a Way of Life

Episode 5 of Private Life

March 11, 2026

Joy Williams

The Stony Dark Within

Rainer Maria Rilke’s temperament, it could be said, was fragile, ghost-haunted, unironic, unthrifty, reliant, romantic, intermittently animistic, and decidedly non-avant-garde.

February 25, 2026

Stephanie Burt

Sappho 27

a poem

March 12, 2026 issue

Mary Jo Salter

Still Life, Hilton Head

a poem

February 26, 2026 issue

James Arthur

Thin Skin

a poem