The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems, 2002-2019 German has a word for 'man', but it also has the word for which in English we have to go to the sentence-sagger 'human being'. Yiddish uses the same word to mean, also, someone of honor, of great respect. Doubtless this could apply to many other poets, as well, but I've always thought especially of Alicia Ostriker as a in a blending of those two meanings ..read more

It was January 3, the beginning of the election year and one that would decide the fate of the country for four years, or for far longer than that. It was One Poet, One Poem, aka, "Truth Against Lies, Poet Against the Apocalypse"—modest bill, large claim ..read more

[A] look at two decidedly older poets, Ursula K. Le Guin, who died in 2018 at eighty-nine, and Stanley Moss, still kicking strong now in his nineties. Doubtless this has something to do with my being rather a geezer, myself, but it has more to do, I think, with my perception of depth, a wiry toughness, with two poets, each in their very different ways solitary, idiosyncratic, each trenching richly into their long, fertile pasts ..read more

Although Carolyn Forché has been writing poetry since the 1970s, she is as well known as a political activist and advocate for human rights. Her recent book, What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance , an account of her experiences in El Salvador during the early 1980s, reflects that perspective, and was named a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. Her first book, , won the Yale Younger Poets prize, but her second book, , which included poems about her experiences in El Salvador, made her famous outside the poetry world, igniting a storm of controversy ..read more

Margaret Randall, poet and activist, is the author of 150 books. For twenty-five years she lived in Latin America, first in Mexico, then Cuba, and finally Nicaragua, before returning to the United States. Deemed a "subversive," she fought a five-year battle to regain her U.S. citizenship. While in Latin America she raised four children and worked a variety of jobs, always finding time to participate in the literary and political struggles of her host countries. Now in her eighties, she remains incredibly active and engaged. In 2020, she published a book of pandemic poems; translations of Latin ..read more

The first time I heard about the Berkeley Poets Co-op was when my friend Paul Aebersold showed me a set of colorful posters he'd made by silk-screening his photographs and pairing them with quotes from poems by Co-op members. It was the fall of 1971, and I was twenty-three years old ..read more

The world seems filled by madness in the meanwhile, but the passing of Michael McClure at eighty-seven in May merits the consideration of poets. McClure was an everything-man, a star spanning the history of the era that made us—dramatist, novelist, songwriter, actor, theorist, performance artist, art critic, organizer, intellectual, and rock-and-roll performer. , Michael McClure's final book, has been published by City Lights Books. A powerful collection written during McClure's last years, it was edited before the poet's death in May 2020. Anne Waldman said of it, "This legendary rockstar eco ..read more

The many expressions of grief at the death of poet Al Young (1939-2021) are a testimony to the considerable extent that he was an important and much-loved West Coast figure. His friend Ishmael Reed has called him "one of the most underrated writers in the country ..read more

Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of fifteen books of poetry and prose, including Under the Capsized Boat We Fly: New and Selected Poems, a finalist for the Western Arts Federation Poetry Prize. She’s the translator of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy’s and teaches Creative Writing and Women’s Literature at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles ..read more

Kim Shuck, writer, weaver, and beadwork artist, was San Francisco's seventh poet laureate from 2017-2021. A Native American, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and a native San Franciscan, she is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently (City Lights Books) and (That Painted Horse Press), as well as a work of prose, . In 2019, she published , a book of poems about violence against indigenous women. Her work appears in When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through , the newly released Norton anthology of Native American poetry edited by Joy Harjo ..read more