A Few Things

“Though you have known someone for more than forty years, though you have worked with them and lived with them, you do not know everything. I do not know everything—but a few things, which I will tell,” writes Mary Oliver about her partner Molly Malone Cook in her book Our World (Beacon Press, 2009), which celebrates their life and home together in Cape Cod through Oliver’s essays and Cook’s photography. Write a poem about someone you have known for a long time, but who is no longer in your life. Begin first by forming two lists: one list for the things you knew about this person and a second list of what you did not know. Select several items from each list and compose a poem that paints a portrait through the lens of your relationship. What are the things that were shared, imparted, revealed, and hidden?

Safia Elhillo, Jos Charles, and Sam Sax

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In this video, Safia Elhillo, author of Girls That Never Die (One World, 2022), Jos Charles, author of A Year & Other Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), and Sam Sax, author of Pig (Scribner, 2023), read a selection of their poems for this Beyond Baroque event in Venice, California.

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John Barth

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In this 2001 Lannan Foundation event, John Barth speaks about the ways in which self-confidence and temperament play a role in his writing in a conversation with literary critic Michael Silverblatt. Barth died at the age of ninety-three on April 2, 2024. For more from Barth, read “All Trees Are Oak Trees: Introductions to Literature” from the January/February 2004 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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Animals Are People Too

The human tendency to anthropomorphize may come with risks great or small, but could there also be benefits? Last month, Indigenous leaders of New Zealand, Tahiti, and the Cook Islands signed a historic treaty granting legal personhood to whales, with the hope that the bestowal will lead to negotiations with Polynesian governments to enforce greater protective rights for the animals, which hold a position of sacred cultural importance. This week, write a personal essay that reflects on a moment, memory, or encounter that propelled you to project humanlike qualities onto an animal, whether a pet, insect, pest, or country critter. Do your personal beliefs about personhood collide or align with arguments about humanity and nature, or different types of sentience and consciousness?

Hanif Abdurraqib on There’s Always This Year

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“It was good to write a book where I’m staring at time directly, in a very literal sense.” In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, Hanif Abdurraqib talks about the unique writing process for his latest book, There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024), the power of nostalgia, and his life in Ohio. Abdurraqib’s new book is featured in Page One in the March/April issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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