Poetry International Online

New in PIOnline

FEATURED: From our 25th Anniversary issue, readings by Ellen Bass and Kwame Dawes, and Chana Bloch on translation.

…and much more!

Les Negres de Paris
“…Every back, / it seems, is a blood neighbor” | Kwame Dawes
The Lesser Gods
“But what about all the modest / neglected deities–the overlooked” | by Ellen Bass
The Assignment
“the poem gripped me and would not let go until I’d turned it into English” | Chana Block on her first translation.

Without Her
“her fine long tail waving a thin farewell/as both flew away from my life.” | by Katharyn Howd Machan
Back When Water Was an Elephant
“since we couldn’t just walk across a lake,/the bed of it cracked now, bed of it dust,//dance partner of the wind” | by Rob Carney

“You Are In No Position to Criticize Anyone”
From From by Monica Youn | reviewed by Mariam Ahmed
What Hope Looks Like When It’s Cut for Survival
Standing in the Forest of Being Alive by Katie Farris | reviewed by Arthur Kayzakian
To Be A Goddess
Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros | reviewed by Alejandra Hernandez

Ukrainian Feature: Words for War
“For many of the poets, the war is not some distant event one hears about in the papers. It is part of their personal history”| poems from Ukraine, edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
In Praise of Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021)
“For years now, as my plane begins its descent toward the airport outside of Kraków, the city where I was born and raised but left years ago, I recite them quietly” | by Piotr Florczyk
Yulya Tsimafeyeva’s Poetry of One-Legged Wonder
“Between these poets of cultural affirmation and the poets of silence… comes a voice of a woman—and a woman in a patriarchal world is always somewhat of an immigrant” | by Valzhyna Mort

Of Things Never Told Before
On myths and muses, radical artifice, genre switching, and the love of children’s poetry | Joseph Thomas talks to Neil Philip
Other People’s Voices
How sound can bridge the past and present and what books of poetry have in common with websites | Zach Bernstein and Paisley Rekdal talk about her digital project West: A Translation
Poetry Unbound
On the other 99% of poetry, how it actually exists in the world | Jessica Pressman talks to poet and scholar Mike Chasar
Celebrating the Natural World
The human, the nonhuman, a love of revising, and the sorrow necessary in celebrating the natural world | Tami Haaland talks to Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Early Morning Rain
“The dragonfly tilted its wings, curved its tail, / Your fingers as thin as a pier’s posts.” | by Nguyễn Quyén
My Story
“if flowers fruit / there will be seeds of pure tears.” | by Ý Nhi
Five Poems by Aleksandr Kabanov
Take off, burrow deep, drift / And listen to the guttural river / Reciting a poem about you | by Aleksandr Kabanov

Nasturtiums
“pull stems away from the ground by root / and wastrel hair yanked scaffolding of a summer” | by Jenny Grassl
Yard Work
until the stalks of the naked ladies fall to the ground, / twisting on their roots; / until our broken fists lie blooming. | by Sarah Maclay
We Have No Sleep
“From our memory / flows water enough to sustain several / fields of wheat.” | by Nikola Madzirov