The American Poetry Review

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“I think of The American Poetry Review as one of the strongest literary forces of our time. APR is where I go to both discover new poets and rekindle my love with some of the foundational poets. There are times when reading an entire issue, cover to
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Five Poems
after an installation by Julian Charrière erraticmemory of sky when you’re standing on the ice cap punctured boulders wheremoss fires glow green you’re not standing you’re flying we chop frozen entropymilk fossils blue mist raven felted forest blonde
The American Poetry Review1 min read
The American Poetry Review
EDITOR Elizabeth Scanlon BUSINESS MANAGER Mike Duffy EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Thalia Geiger Hannah Gellman GENERAL COUNSEL Dennis J. Brennan, Esq. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Christopher Buckley, Deborah Burnham, Jan Freeman, Leonard Gontarek, Everett Hoagland,
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Two Poems
The sun is drifting away again, behind cloudsthat look most like the hairs well sprung from my temples. I can’t see the sun setting,but I know it is. So many things are like this: merely a sensation of truth. I can’t see my bodychanging, but I know i
The American Poetry Review5 min read
Trash Talk
Over the gloved hand there is a hooded bird and either we have time traveled into extreme wealth or poverty or this is a demo at a nature center or public school. Education gave me a heads-up that societies get stuck in loops and we were due for a gi
The American Poetry Review25 min read
“Breath – and I”: Dickinson, Keats, & the Lifted Gaze
Days, weeks, months, I stopped counting, unable to take a deep breath. The kind you don’t notice till it’s gone. The kind that says, yes, the next rung of air is there to step to. A breath like you’re thinking of what comes next, and it comes. * It’s
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Deux Poèmes
translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson On the whole, I’m quite pleased with Africa.John Coltrane On the bus window framed by yellow jute curtains thatslide horizontally along a flexible rod and may be securedright and left, if need be, wit
The American Poetry Review1 min read
French Movies
Every variation features the last two people alive,poolside. In a kitchen pouring milk for a dogwith one eye. So much eros, memento mori, etc.in the small glass always brought to the womanby the man who thinks of her,only sometimes. A little, he migh
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Two Poems
after Adam Zagajewski It falls quiet and the last light of the daymimics the peace of this worldas the retreating light snake throughthe walls of old houses, turning this villageinto a study of beauty and the lines of old age. I have lived here once,
The American Poetry Review4 min read
Five Poems
Everybody came to my first wedding.Smelly Neil from primary schoolplayed ‘Splat the Rat’ with the skinhead girlwho sold me fake ecstasy. The bodybuildersfrom dad’s porn films told jokes about potatoesto monochrome ancestors who’d perishedin the Great
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Five Poems
Into the ranks of my enemiesI’m sendingfewer instructions. Better bread.Smaller sensations.I’m sending this new poemI’d hoped to feeldifferently about, at least insofaras I understand itright now. I’m filing my report:It’s the endof a lazy summer we
The American Poetry Review12 min read
On Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift
Stephanie Burt: Welcome to Kristie and Stephanie’s Version: we tried interviewing each other about Invisible Strings last month but the audio failed, so we’re trying again. Invisible Strings, ICYMI, collects 113 poems by 113 poets responding to one s
The American Poetry Review3 min read
Three Poems
from Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift STEPHANIE BURT with Annabel Facey and Matt Tibbins I think I’m in my reputation era.I crave support from friends. Commitments scareme.I try to keep the tears off my mascara. I use
The American Poetry Review13 min read
Time Is Classical Music
I’m five years old and on vacation with my mom for the first time. It’s summer, and we took the train from Odesa, my birthplace and the only city I know, to Karolina-Bugaz, a little seaside village a couple of hours away. We’re staying with a kind wo
The American Poetry Review33 min read
Aesthetics and Ethics in Poetic Closure
Note: This essay will serve as the introduction to the anthology Breaking into Blossom: Poems with Extraordinary Endings, forthcoming from Texas Review Press in 2025. This anthology takes us to the end of the poem — and “out of the poem’s tunnel of w
The American Poetry Review6 min read
No Rest, by Jason Koo: A Review
No Rest Jason Koo Diode Editions, 2024 172 pp. $18.00 I had no intention of rewatching Sixteen Candles tonight, but here we are. In Jason Koo’s collection No Rest, there is a current of irreverence exemplified by the author’s nod to Long Duk Dong, a
The American Poetry Review8 min read
Three Poems
to Robert Hass Who am I anyway and this book isn’t even Rushdie, it’s Cervantes or wait: Quichotte, key-shot, qui shot me? Can you do it, make languages just go together? Or is he just making new myths out of the past, i.e. Quichotte = Quixote, Satan
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Alike
When my son is asleep, he looks just like my mother scowling in a one piece on a crowded beach, in that photo I stole a few years back, slipped beneath a family portrait. My mother always hated photos. I’m hideous, she’d say — hide me. We’d block her
The American Poetry Review7 min read
In the Winter Ruins
—Budapest, 2024 That I stood at the doorof the second century— That I crossedbeneath two giant highways to whereLegionnaires bathed-- The Great Baths— That above, the continuous roar,trucks and cars freshly 21st century god awful — That in such an un
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Shooting Down the Mistletoe
God is real, I know,because you have to shoot down mistletoe —don’t believe me? Look it up — then look upto higher branches, drop in two twinshotgun shells — Holidays in Tennessee,& New Year’s Eve she & I sobourbon-blitzed at the neighbors’backyard f
The American Poetry Review4 min read
In the Designed Landscape (Garden of Planes)
O you rakers of sand, come. I bow, slightly, to the stone ear. It is once againthe season of resemblances. Forfeit, my life, your life, lives livedin the company of doors. Come in, come in, the sound is moist with morning dew.It will perform to your
The American Poetry Review1 min read
Lilacs Blowing Across His Face
Following William Wordsworth’s sonnet “It is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free” I don’t give a fuck.Let the rain governMe. My hands and feet in the mud or perchedAtop a pile as I fall off of me,I’m mulch. I see myself like I matter.I am a being quie
The American Poetry Review2 min read
Heartbreaks
for Jane Whether you love a person, a country, a game of Scrabble,the world says you just keep flailing: I’ve got other work to do. Not true. The world says nothing. If there were a merry way,the world would go on it. The waitress didn’t hear your or

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