The Millions Interview

The Vitality of Opposing Energies: The Millions Interviews Paul Lisicky

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I was very conscious of trying to write about emergency—how do people survive when they can’t take for granted they’re going to be around in the morning?
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On Poetry

Crooked Lines of God: On Christian Wiman

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Wiman has always been a seeker. Survival Is a Style makes this search into song, and it could not have arrived at a better moment.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: March 2020

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Our own Nick Ripatrazone takes a look at seven essential books of poetry, including work from Traci Brimhall, Carl Phillips, and Craig Santos Perez.
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The Millions Interview

Nightmares, Dreams, and God: The Millions Interviews Jeff Sharlet

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There’s an idea that empathy is something you extend to another. That’s not quite right. It’s something that happens, usually in brief moments—maybe only the duration of a snapshot, a conversation—between people.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: February 2020

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These poems are hymns to a lost daughter. An affirmation. “How briefly the body is a story / where everything matters, // even its name.”
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Excerpts

Father, I Found the Movies: Featured Poetry by Chad Bennett

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"Am I really doing anything new?" Bennett is able to channel that particular magic and mystery of Warhol as he inhabits his persona in this poem.
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Excerpts

I Wake to Bury You Again: Featured Poetry by Cori A. Winrock

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Our series of poetry excerpts continues with a poem from Little Envelope of Earth Conditions, the new collection by Cori A. Winrock, whose lines loll with the rhythm of grief.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: January 2020

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Smith’s lines will hypnotize you, but also wake you, as in: “i’m waiting for a few folks // i love dearly to die so i can be myself. / please don’t make me say who.”
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Excerpts

Not Even My People Recognize Me: Featured Poetry by Johanny Vázquez Paz

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Paz offers a lament of identity and appearance; the recurring usage of "they"—both displaced and omnipresent—suggests the narrator's feeling that her light skin and hair are seen as a curse.
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Year in Reading

Year in Reading: Nick Ripatrazone

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I like how her poems pull me here and there, and leave me elsewhere. “What’s a life for?” she asks, mid-poem. Let’s read and figure it out. Or just wander.
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Excerpts

We’ll Laugh About It in the Morning: Featured Poetry by Graham Barnhart

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In this poem from Barnhart, moments of precision contrast with the dizzying dullness of military exhaustion: the body ready, the body worn down.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: December 2019

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“I am a hundred women in one / hybrid of virgin possibilities / and I feel on my skin the pain and the laughter / of all the warrior women I inherited.”
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Excerpts

The Dead Do Not Return: Featured Poetry by Barbara Crooker

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"No one gets excited when they see sparrows"—an apt metaphor for how Crooker looks at human bodies aging and worn.
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Book Previews

Must-Read Poetry: November 2019

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“how simple it is to see / in the dark, like an ember glowing wild — / losing a child means always losing a child.” —Shimon Adaf, Aviva-no
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Excerpts

Her Moment of Escape: Featured Poetry by Shimon Adaf

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Our series of poetry excerpts continues with a piece from Shimon Adaf's book-length elegy, Aviva-No, a song of grief and absence.
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The Millions Interview

About Brooklyn, All of Brooklyn: The Millions Interviews Thomas J. Campanella

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Deep‐south Brooklyn is the flyover country of New York City. I want to make people think again, and more deeply, about Brooklyn, all of Brooklyn.
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Excerpts

Trippingly on the Tongue: Featured Poetry by Maurice Manning

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The latest from Pulitzer Prize-finalist Manning is written entirely from the point of view of Abraham Lincoln (who, it turns out, is a great poet).
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Excerpts

Everything Here Is a Test: Featured Poetry by Paige Lewis

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Our series of excerpts continues with a piece from Lewis’s Space Struck, a deft, entertaining debut from a poet of surprise.
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