Jump to navigation Skip to content
“There’s something about straight lines on a page and the ability to use punctuation in an expected and familiar way that changes the way you do honesty on the page.” Poet and essayist Camonghne Felix speaks about mental health and heartbreak, and the vulnerability she found in writing her debut memoir, Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation (One World, 2023), for this Live From NYPL event with multi-disciplinary artist Bunny Michael.
Codex is an independent bookstore located in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. Opened in January 2018, Codex sells new and gently used books with a focus on literary fiction, art, cinema, and philosophy. The shop also hosts book releases and readings. Open seven days a week from 12:00 PM to 10:00 PM, Codex buys gently used books and has a charming cart with $1 books along the sidewalk.
“In Lagos, we name our girls / Darling, Sincere, Precious, because / A name is a stake in the grave.” Omotara James reads her poem “Half Girl, Then Elegy,” which appears in her collection, Song of My Softening (Alice James Books, 2022), for this virtual reading with Charif Shanahan and Maggie Smith, hosted by Kaveh Akbar, poetry editor of the Nation.
In a recent installment of our Craft Capsules series, Megan Fernandes describes a writing exercise centered around breath that she assigns to her students. “I tell my students to take out their phones and record themselves saying ‘I love you’ over and over again in a single breath, noting the time,” she writes. By counting the number of times this phrase is said in one breath, the students can calculate how long their lines are and how many stanzas their poems will contain. This week try Fernandes’s writing exercise to find the natural line length of your own breath and write a poem guided by the capacity of your lungs.
“Books sustain us. Books inspire us. Books fortify us. Books help us become who we are,” says poet John Keene in this video featuring National Book Award–winning authors—including Tess Gunty, Megan McDowell, Imani Perry, Samanta Schweblin, and Sabaa Tahir—speaking about why they believe books matter for the National Book Foundation’s Read With NBF program.
If you are a poet looking to place a manuscript of experimental or hybrid work, including work in translation, consider submitting to Mason Jar Press’s 1729 Book Prize. Given annually in alternating years for a book of poetry or a book of prose, this year’s contest offers a prize of $1,000 and publication by Mason Jar Press for a poetry collection that is at once “challenging” and “engaging.” Chen Chen will judge.
Using only the online submission system, submit a poetry manuscript of 50 to 75 poems or pages by July 31 (submissions will be capped at 500 entrants). There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
This year, Mason Jar Press has released titles including the debut poetry collections Glazed With War by Pantea Amin Tofangchi and trans [re]incarnation by Elias Kerr, as well as its literary journal’s most recent issue, Jarnal Volume 3: Transitions (edited by Tara Campbell). Founded by Micheal B. Tager and Ian Anderson—classmates from the University of Baltimore MFA program—the independent press has published handmade, limited-run chapbooks and full-length books since 2014. The 2nd annual 1729 Book Prize, offered in partnership with The Ivy Bookshop, will run in line with the press’s mission of publishing work that “is meant to challenge status quos, both literary and culturally,” while also having “merit in both those realms.”
“Writing poetry, to me, is about profound interiority. It’s about wading into the saltwater of your own body: capillaries bursting, eyes brimming, unmoored.” In this video, singer-songwriter Arlo Parks discusses her debut collection, The Magic Border: Poetry and Fragments From My Soft Machine (Dey Street Books, 2023), which features twenty poems and lyrics from her studio album My Soft Machine.
“Speak to me; speak into me, / the wind said, when I woke this morning, Let’s see what happens.” In this PBS NewsHour video, Carl Phillips reads a selection of poems from his Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2022), and speaks to Jeffrey Brown about the intimacy and power of poetry. Phillips is the recipient of the 2021 Jackson Poetry Prize.
This week marks the birthday of the iconic Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who would have turned 119 on July 12. Known for his historical epics, political manifestos, and love poems, Neruda’s incisive and joyful odes were often dedicated to ordinary objects making them approachable yet surreal. In “Ode to My Socks,” translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly, Neruda describes his covered feet as “two fish made / of wool, / two long sharks / sea-blue.” In “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market,” translated from the Spanish by Robert Robinson, Neruda describes a dead tuna fish as “a dark bullet / barreled / from the depths.” Inspired by Neruda’s electric, surreal images, write an ode to an ordinary object in your life. Whether it be a bookshelf, a desk, or a coat, think expansively about how to honor and describe this praiseworthy item.
The author of I Do Everything I’m Told contemplates writing about and beyond personal boundaries.
