I don’t remember when poetry came into my life…
The Oldest College Literary Magazine in the Nation
From Poetry
100th Volume Retrospective: Happy Autumn Fields by John Ashbery
John Ashbery won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and many other prizes. This poem was published by the Review over twenty years after he had earned his M.A. from Columbia. Happy Autumn Fields by John Ashbery I call it (though I’m no authority)The big syndrome, of when everythingLies down together. The pointed roofsThat called…
100th Volume Retrospective: from “Dakar Doldrums” by Allen Ginsberg
At Columbia University, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and other beat poets got to know each other. Many of them were published in the Review. from “Dakar Doldrums” by Allen Ginsberg IV Twenty days have drifted in the wakeOf this slow aged ship that carries coalFrom Texas to Dakar. I, for the sakeOf little but my causelessness of…
100th Volume Retrospective: Choruses by John Hollander
John Hollander was an eminent poet, scholar, and critic. He has written numerous poetry collections, the first of which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. He is also known for his 1981 book Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Choruses by John Hollander I (The crumbling days and the hard cold nightsAre flickering,…
100th Volume Retrospective: Atonement by Mary Morris
As a countdown to the release of the first issue of our 100th volume on December 14th, we will be posting pieces every day from previous issues over the years. Our first piece was written by Mary Morris, who went on to earn the Rome Prize in Literature and publish many novels, memoirs, and story collections. She…
Endnotes on Pale Fire
Azure adj. blue, bright, cloudless; (of love) cloudless: The false azure of cloudless love. And when a noun – heaven, palate, the roof of one’s mouth. Azure as in: The bright, bottomless vowels that once echoed against the roof of your mouth. Or: Unstuck from your palate, here I am – trying to speak your…
Water Lilies after Monet
And light— my paint liquid light— the pale flush of rose lustrous daffodil yellow lilac blue and soft electric silver warm blaze colored oil glowing light— shimmering green mesmerizing blurring deep and nebulous sheer light and all I feel is moment… here hazy and bleary glinting of clouds limpid sapphire flashing sky whirling cloud-strokes…
Eating Bread is Wooden Ships Crashing on the Shore
There is a dial tone in the mirror. In a single room, blue invents a forest, and when the light arrives, it arrives like milk, without origin—white rain erasing fliers on a phone-pole. Milk is the ranger, transducted through the forest’s million acres, emerging on the other side as a pencil. Milk is a bookmark. Milk reminds you of the sound foreign coins make in your pocket, and gladly, you are near. Milk has a weight in the mouth like a tuba has in the ear, and the chest which is the ear’s private amphitheater. The moonlit pond…
Exeter Book Riddle #47: The Book-Moth
Original Old English: Moððe word fræt. Me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol. Stælgiest ne wæs wihte þy gleawra, þe he þam wordum swealg. English Translation: A moth made feast of words. I thought that…
Thinking of a Friend at Night
Early in this evil year comes autumn. I walk in the fields at night, the cold wind at my hat, the rain rattles…And you? And you, my friend? You are standing—perhaps—and scanning the sickle-moon vault over forests in its little arcing bends and bivouac fire, red in the jet-black valley. You are sprawling—perhaps—in a field of straw, sleeping, and soft dew falls on your forehead, your armor of a war-jacket. You could be on horseback tonight, stationed at the outpost, peering out, gun in fist, whispering to your horse, stroking away its fatigue… Perhaps—I think—you are spending the…