With so many new and emerging poets in the world today, it can be difficult to make a final decision on what to buy…and when. However, when it comes to Lee Herrick; California’s first ever Asian American to be appointed to the position of Poet Laureate, as well as the first ever Laureate to be re-appointed to the position: there is only purity of existence, because––much like two sides of the same coin––Scar and Flower, the third collection by Lee Herrick, examines how people deal with life’s duality of trauma and growth by using skillful, and tactful techniques to illustrate love, loss, and the joy in memories made.
As students, we frame our academic career around a core subject that we excelled in during our early years of schooling. For some, it was science or math with an expected future in medicine. For others (like me), it was English, so writing was a surefire career option. However, there was one part that I had long been afraid of before college: poetry.
It’s that time of year. Nights are a few lines longer as the fireflies’ light glows increasingly more succinct. Embrace the change of seasons as a proposition seeped in prepositions primed for new poeting. Now is a page-turning opportunity to prep pencils, similes, and poetic prowess, and stock up on key supplies for a coveted crop of new words and poetry. Read on for tips for back-to-poetry shopping. Don’t forget your favorite notebook!
Every month, I peruse Google Trends and find that the public has been searching for sports teams, athletes, actors, and political headlines. These are the stand-bys. It’s not every month that folks have reason to google things like radioactive shrimp, but August was a special time filled with magic, love, goofy words, disease, and threatening crustaceans. We’re two thirds of the way through 2025 and nothing should surprise us anymore.
PoCamper Annabelle Roses reflects on the five day, four nights we spent in the Catskills for this year’s Poetry Camp!
“Poetopia” is a feeling of community. It’s when spoken word moves an audience to laughter, sadness, and conviction. It’s when you leave with more friends than you arrived. It’s when your body sinks into the grass, the cool breeze restores your lungs, and the strangers on the blanket next to you aren’t strangers at all.
Every so often, some journalist declares that “Literature is dead” in an op-ed. In a rose-colored hindsight, these articles are underlined with a nostalgic yearning for bygone writers, capturing the “ineffable but all-powerful zeitgeist.”
This summer, that man was NYT columnist David Brooks. There are some valid points that Mr. Brooks makes, namely the changing media and publishing landscape, the shortening of attention spans, and a society that rewards conformity. However, I would like to propose a solution: the idiomatization of poetry into the vernacular.
As the peak of blackberry season begins to roll away and the time of driving summer fruit in from hundreds of miles away is on the horizon, I reminisce on the warm mornings I spent in my backyard this summer with a bowl of fresh fruit. The most notable (photogenic) of the assortment were the blackberries glistening on the sides of the bowl. But time and time again, I was met with this pattern: sweet, tart, bitter, tart, bitter, sweet, sweet, bitter.
July overwhelms me. It’s abundant in every way, overflowing with flowers and sunlight as well as noise, crowds, and humidity. Have you noticed how quiet winter becomes? I long for it. But this is July, and there’s a lot going on. The internet is thrumming with millions of queries as we all find things to wonder about. Here are a few hot topics for July, per Google Trends.
Ever wondered what New York Poet you’d be? Find out what your zodiac sign says & celebrate our October 4th Masquerade Ball!