A poem, and why it holds
Poetry, three collections an edition — where to enter a book, what a poet is actually doing, and the one poem to read first.
In this issue
Frank O'Hara's 1964 collection argues that poetry written on a lunch break can still be poetry, and mostly wins the argument.
The Verse Editors · September 22, 2026
Also inside
Anne Carson turns a ruined Greek fragment into a verse novel about a red, winged boy falling in love, and it is stranger and better than the premise suggests.
Flowers, a gardener, and God take turns speaking in Glück's 1992 collection, and none of them cancels the others out.
Ocean Vuong's debut asks to be entered through its self-address; the line breaks carry the argument the poems make about inheritance and war.
The most widely read American poet of her generation, and the poem that explains why.
A collection that uses Iron Age bog bodies to write about Northern Ireland, and is still argued about.
A poet who removed himself entirely from literary life and wrote about grief with almost no consolation in it.
A collection that works read silently and works completely differently read aloud — which is the whole argument.
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