Topic: Poetry

America's celebrity obsession: Can't live with it or without it

Blame the media or blame ourselves for our current celebrity obsession. Either way, it is causing people to go to absurd lengths to grab a piece of fame.

A Village Life

This 11th book of verse by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück offers beautiful language with a sense of loss and disappointment.

Young Poets Contest Rules

Nine Gates

Ahab's Wife

Ahab's Wife

Lit

Mary Karr tells the story of her failed marriage, her struggles with alcohol and mental illness, and the peace she finally found in prayer.

Mentors, Muses & Monsters

Well-known writers recall the big names they encountered on the way up – both those that helped them and those that hindered.

Cash for clunkers poem: Oh clunker, my clunker!

Becoming Americans

Selections from 85 immigrants tell what it means to become an American.

The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

The real-life fairy tale of Françoise d’Aubigné, little-known second wife of France's Sun King.

The Financial Lives of the Poets

A smart, witty novel about a nice, middle-class dad tempted to try crime to keep his family afloat.

The Anthologist

The writer’s block of a poet becomes the excuse for Nicholson Baker’s daft, brilliant, hilarious novel.

Movie review: "Bright Star"

This John Keats biopic is sensuously mounted – and still remarkably grounded.

Books were salvation for L.A. gangbanger

Poet Luis Rodriguez created Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural and bookstore to help save others.

Love, not food, satisfies

A Christian Science perspective.

Want to feel happier? Pick up a book

In Pakistan, Taliban tearing apart a culture

Pashtun residents say militants have imposed extremist views on the population, displacing centuries-old traditions.

The Age of Wonder

Richard Holmes paints a different picture of the Romantic Age, one in which scientific discovery and artistic creation shared close company.

When has a book inspired you to action?

Have you heard the musical tree?

The Looking House

The poetry of Fred Marchant explores literal battles as well as those of the mind and spirit.

Six Picks: Recommendations from the Monitor staff

National parks' fee-free weekends, a money tale from Niall Ferguson, opera for Bellini fans, and more.

Opinion: Why art is vital to freedom

On July 4, remember Solzenhitsyn's words: 'Art serves to battle lies and preserve the moral history of a society without the transitory and debasing rhetoric of bureaucrats.'

In the Twitter revolution, echoes of one of the great modern poets