The Lord is My Shepherd, Eastman Johnson (1863). Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"We have seen a black president, and we have seen what kind of president comes after a black president." Poet Terrance Hayes on race and poetry at the 2016 National Book Awards.

Poetry isn’t politics. But as my students helped remind me, it can be the fertile soil for our better selves. 

An English professor at Iowa on the challenges of teaching poetry in the post-Trump era.
↩︎ Slate
Nov 21, 2016

Poetry for uncertain times

In times of crisis, many turn to poetry for comfort--and also for galvanizing inspiration. The Guardian pulled together five poems to help counter despair—and apathy—in the days following Trump's election. 

But why do we seek out poems? The editor of Poetry magazine attempts to explain poetry's allure in times of war and uncertainty, to chart the intersection between politics and art, between poetry and activism. "Sooner or later, we’ll find that poetry has been waiting for us."

Nov 14, 2016

Madam President, where has all the funding gone for arts in the schools? Could those kuts be the reesen we are all getin dummer?

If 50 writers sent letters to the president, this is what they’d say.
↩︎ Poets & Writers
Sep 7, 2016

Hope is an invasion of our privacy.

Poet Robin Myrick sets out to chronicle the election the only way she knows how—through verse.
↩︎ Entropy
Sep 7, 2016
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