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.

Alan Seeger (1888–1916) was an American, stern Protestant, and minor poet who ended up dying at the Battle of the Somme, fighting with the French Foreign Legion. World War I is far more famous for its ...

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 ...