Tim Martin reviews John Donne: the Reformed Soul by John Stubbs. Life, wrote John Donne in 1624, "is like a Sentence, so much as may be uttered in a breathing: and such a difference as is in ...

Hecht argues that a single poem, whether for a wedding, birth, or funeral, offers a practical guide to a richer, more intentional life, and is often the result of hard-won personal wisdom. “Outside ...

Our critic A.O. Scott marvels at the power and paradox of a sonnet by Gwendolyn Brooks. Isabella Cotier By A.O. Scott Here’s a poem about patience, about self-control, about the need to conserve ...

Snapshots of life. Poems are multi-splendored things. What poetry is doesn’t matter as much as what it does. Expectations and perceptions differ from reader to reader, from need to need.