As resolutely canonical as they seem to us now, the “Holy Sonnets” of John Donne (1572–1631) flicker with some uncertainty in the imaginary museum hall of English literature. We think we know them.

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) occupies a serious place in any standard list of English poets, even though he published only 13 poems in his lifetime and his collected poetry — including his Latin poems, ...

When the cold optics of domination are left unchallenged, the dead die twice. The cruel euphemism of profit and the genocidal language of extermination meet their answer in Daniel Borzutzky’s “Poem ...

Poetry is the meeting point of parallel lines—in infinity, but also in the here and now. It is where the patent and incontrovertible intersects with the ineffable and incommensurable. It can be as ...