We're excited to announce the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows: Xochi Quetzali Cartland, Fatima Jafar, Noel Munguia-Moreno, Shaina Phenix, and Tariq Thompson! 🎉 Learn more about this year's brilliant cohort: https://bit.ly/4coV2rx

Poetry Foundation Announces the 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows

Honoring extraordinary young poets with more than $145,000 in prizes

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I know there’s something better down the road. We need to find a place where we are safe. We walk into that which we cannot yet see. —Elizabeth Alexander with the poem wrote for Barack Obama's first presidential inauguration; today is Obama's 65th birthday. #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4vH8Xjz

Praise Song for the Day

Praise song for struggle, praise song for the day. Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself, others by first do no harm or take no more than you need.…

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praise song for the day by elizabeth alexander #poetry @poetry.foundation www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52141/...

The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard, as if you were walking on the beach and found a diamond as big as a shoe. —Diane Wakoski, who was born #OnThisDay in 1937! https://bit.ly/3WIQ3ut

Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons

I was a quiet child, afraid of walking into a store alone, afraid of the water, the sun, the dirty weeds in back yards, afraid of my mother’s bad breath,…

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If there’s a “criticism is biography” school in poetry, there’s a “poetry podcast is autobiography” school. Helena de Groot hosts this charming series of discussions with contemporary poets. Not a craft podcast so much as an exploration of a version of the poetic mindset. #poetry #poetrypodcasts

Reviewed an obscure movie based on a little-known poem: www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/181...

Adrienne Rich's "A Mark of Resistance" is one of the reasons I'm so grateful to writers. Sometimes they find the words when you can't. Go find your words. #writingcommunity www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? —James Baldwin was born #OnThisDay in 1924. #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/3MK9ufW

The moon is my mother softly smooth out those secret slips of paper the birth of suffering flashes to mind precisely because of life’s incompleteness it completes itself. —Happy birthday to Bei Dao, who was born #OnThisDay in 1949! https://bit.ly/4wwXdlb

Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean against the trunk and practice being alone. —Marie Howe with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4guqw2g

The Copper Beech

Immense, entirely itself, it wore that yard like a dress, with limbs low enough for me to enter it and climb the crooked ladder to where I could lean...

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Multihyphenate poet Jamila Woods on how light and space inspire creativity in our video series, "Where I Write." Video produced by Three Story Media.

It wasn't a great journey, only a side trip. It wasn't love for eternity, or any such crap; it was just something that happened... —Happy birthday to Kim Addonizio, who was born #OnThisDay in 1954! https://bit.ly/4ew9YnU

On the latest episode of the #PoetryOffTheShelf podcast, Maya C. Popa and host Helena de Groot discuss the monkey at the pet store, beauty, and waking up to the world as it is. 🐒 Listen here: https://bit.ly/3TgHyaS

But, at our parting we will be as when We innocently met. No simple word That shall be uttered at our mirthful board, Shall make us sad next morning or affright The liberty that we’ll enjoy tonight. —Ben Jonson with the #PoemOfTheDay on International Friendship Day. https://bit.ly/3Qp0DXh

Inviting a Friend to Supper

Of this we will sup free, but moderately, And we will have no Pooley, or Parrot by, Nor shall our cups make any guilty men; But, at our parting we will be…

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Nellie Wong, who died this year, leaves behind a formidable legacy as a poet, activist, and champion of the working class. Read David Grundy's essay on her work: https://bit.ly/45sdsUt

Was there really any lotus there in the flying-j rest stop or atop my head blossoming into a thousand petals? –Julian T. Brolaski in the July/August issue of POETRY Read the full poem "blue lotus" https://bit.ly/3SKjPzq #PoemoftheDay

I don’t care if you love me there were 60-ft waves in kaua‘i today my blood’s blue in its veins and I look good in my jeans blue like the sea and blue like my people in the sea. —Julian T. Brolaski with the #PoemOfTheDay from the July/August issue of POETRY. https://bit.ly/3SKjPzq

blue lotus

the eucalyptus is also called the blue gum blue is either the rarest or the commonest color in nature on the leaf of the lotus I beheld a drop of dew...

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To say this now, in the city of our remaking, is to say that I have always longed to be the lurking shadow beneath the water’s surface, a universe of mystery, waiting to breach the water. —Kwame Dawes, who was born #OnThisDay in1962! https://bit.ly/43Ftjyh

Straight Paths

Let us return to the hubris of where we began: the end of that first chapter, the narrative preparing the way for my arrival, the wit and charm a kind of...

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We’re doomed. I know we can’t all be Moses but have you noticed that superstars always want to play our parts. —Nick Makoha with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/43K1J2W

Julius Caesar

I believe that James McAvoy is a type of Caesar. There’s this dialogue where Nicholas Garrigan, played by McAvoy, is rebuked by Idi Amin— You promised to…

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The poet Frank O'Hara died 60 years ago today at the age of 40, after a tragic accident on Fire Island, NY. Here's a piece I wrote for the Poetry Foundation to mark the 50th anniversary in 2016, about O'Hara's posthumous legacy: www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/900...

"When it comes to outlook & point of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge peering out toward an archipelago of glass on the mainland" #TodaysPoem #poetry Islands by Yusef Komunyakaa (2012 @poetry.foundation Magazine) www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

POET LORE is a biannual print journal published with the conviction that poetry provides a record of human experience as valuable as history. Learn more about our grantee-partner: https://bit.ly/3Tdkx8J

Meet Our Grantee-Partner: Poet Lore

Poet Lore embraces diversity, defining its constituency as broadly as possible.

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December was late. Outside the ash was watching itself end and time ride with the thief. – Ethan Chua in the June/July issue of POETRY Read the full poem "To the stranger who stole my bike" https://bit.ly/450ijfD #PoemoftheDay

Have you experienced BOLD TYPE at the Poetry Foundation yet? CAConrad's poem “First Light” fills the Poetry Foundation's gallery wall as a large-scale poetic design, inviting visitors to look, linger, and reflect. Plan your visit before this installment closes on August 1: https://bit.ly/4c3vTTB

My soul radially whorls out to the edges of my body, according to the same laws by which stars shine, communicating with my body by emanation. When you see her, you feel the impact of what visual can mean. —Mei-mei Berssenbrugge with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4vjPA0v

Hello, the Roses

This felt sense at seeing the rose extends, because light in the DNA of my cells receives light frequencies of the flower as a hologram. A moment extends...

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On your way to see THE ODYSSEY in theaters? Wow your friends with your knowledge about Homer! Did he invent the epic simile? Did he even exist? 🤔 Our free online archive may have the niche details you seek: https://bit.ly/4pxK5Jz #TheOdyssey

Homer

Considered to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey

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William Herschel. Good guy with a telescope, not so much with the lingo: he called his discovery “Georgium Sidus” or “Georgian Star” after George III, but the name didn’t stick. —David Kirby with the #PoemOfTheDay from the July/August issue of POETRY. https://bit.ly/4gSbDXR

The Man Who Discovered Uranus

There you are, blinking back tears, while your friend is hoping that an airplane hits your house so they don't have to listen to this lugubrious shit...

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Lovely Poem of the Day from @poetry.foundation www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

My ear amps whistle like they are singing to Echo, goddess of noise, the raveled knot of tongues, of blaring birds, consonant crumbs of dull doorbells, sounds swamped in my misty hearing aid tubes. —Raymond Antrobus with the #PoemOfTheDay. https://bit.ly/43KTRhv

Echo

1 My ear amps whistle like they are singing to Echo, goddess of noise, the raveled knot of tongues, of blaring birds, consonant crumbs of dull doorbells,…

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Happy birthday to Carl Phillips, who was born #OnThisDay in 1959! 🥳 https://bit.ly/4exCx4z

Archery

To have timed your arrow perfectly meant watching the air for a moment seem stitched throughout with a kind of timelessness. To have straddled at last,...

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