Defining the word poem isn’t that simple. Basically, it’s any collection of written or spoken words that have some sort of lyrical quality, rhythm, and/or structure that’s less straightforward than a ...

This year, National Poetry Month brings an ambitious collaboration: a cross-country relay race of 54 poets contributing to one poem about America. The practice is known as renga, an ancient Japanese ...

Most mornings, after I make coffee and feed the cat, I sit in the black chair with my oatmeal and read a poem … or two. I savor the words and the sound of the words. It’s a visitation, really. A ...

The clerihew is named for its inventor, English writer Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who remembered penning his first one as a teenager in school during the 1890s. Its subject was Sir Humphry Davy (which ...

Clockwise from top left: Walt Whitman, Robert Lowell, Virginia Woolf, Yusef Komunyakaa, Adrienne Rich, Langston Hughes, Denise Levertov. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos via Wikimedia Commons. O ...

As a commuter tried to make out the words of Richard C. Shaner’s “Gilman Pond Mountain,” someone walked right over it. Partially funded through a $45,000 grant from the Federal Transit Administration ...