Although both his books are influenced by the rhythms of hip-hop and spoken word, Marcus Wicker’s second book of poetry, Silencer, is a noticeable departure. His first book, Maybe the Saddest Thing, looks at Dave Chappelle, RuPaul, and Kenny G i…

  Meghan O’Rourke is a poet, an essayist, the author of the acclaimed memoir The Long Goodbye, a teacher, and an editor; she served as the poetry editor of The Paris Review from 2005 to 2010. The Summer issue of the Review includes O’Rourke’…

Morgan Parker has a long résumé—she teaches and edits—that somehow hasn’t precluded a prolific career as a poet. Her first collection, Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, came last year; her second, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyon…

There’s a popular story about Linda Pastan: she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia Plath. It was an auspicious start for Pastan, even if she had never heard of Plath at the time. She…

The past two years have been eventful for Ladan Osman. Last year, her chapbook, Ordinary Heaven, was selected for inclusion in the box set Seven New Generation African Poets, a project of the African Poetry Book Fund, and she received the 2014 Siller…

  Last year saw the publication of In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems 1987–2011, a significant retrospective of the work of poet Peter Gizzi. Gizzi—who also has three poems in the latest issue of The Paris Review—himself selected and arranged In …

A writer and poet whose verse recently appeared in the Spring issue of The Paris Review–Carol Muske-Dukes has long been interested and active in presenting a public face of poetry. A former poet laureate of California and a teacher for many years, …

Mary Szybist may not have been the best-known writer on the poetry shortlist for the 2013 National Book Award, but her book Incarnadine was ambitious and thoughtful enough to overcome this. Her second collection, after Granted (2003), Incarnadine com…

Over four decades, Gregory Orr has established his reputation as a master of the lyric poem. Throughout his career, which also includes books of essays and criticism and an award-winning memoir, Orr has primarily written short free-verse poems, but…