Shane McCrae

I wrote a sonnet and @janaprikryl.bsky.social was kind enough to publish it in the new issue of @nybooks.com. Thank you Jana and everybody at the NYRB! I hope you like it. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

A new issue of Literary Matters! And I am so grateful that a few of my poems are in it alongside many wonderful things! And here's one of those poems. It's in iambic hexameter and terza rima and I hope you like it and the others: www.literarymatters.org/19-1-kushim-...

I'm gonna call my Elder Scrolls-themed band The Deviated Septims.

I feel honored and grateful beyond full expression, that “New and Collected Hell,” alongside “I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always,” by Douglas Kearney, and “Reprise,” by Golden, is a finalist for the 2026 Legacy Award from the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation. www.hurstonwright.org

Villanelles are hard to write! But I tried to write one, and @newversereview.bsky.social was kind enough to publish it in the Summer 2026 issue. Thank you thank you to everyone there.

Today, the impossible feeling that I might start writing essays--about poetry!--for real.

Finally I OMGosh have the issue of Oxford Poetry edited by Hall and Hill, and with Hill's poems, written when he was a baby, in it! And I'm sharing the wealth, y'all, as you will find every Hill poem from the issue here! I have been searching for this thing for YEARS!

Ya boy has an essay on [...] and [...] in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to [...]! Whaaaaaat?! Quite stoked, y’all, quite stoked. Edit: Not a Cambridge Companion to me!

Tomorrow at 7 at Dear Friend Books in Brooklyn I will be reading poems with the brilliant Anna Lena Phillips Bell. Oh I do hope you can come! 343A Tompkins Ave, Brooklyn, NY.

When I learn that a writer about whose work I had been curious has used AI to help her write her latest, forthcoming novel, that invalidates her previous novels for me, too, and she becomes a writer I will never read. Which is fine! There are so many writers! But I'm bummed about it anyway.

The more I read this, the more I love it: www.literarymatters.org/18-2-piano-p...

RIP J.H. Prynne, who meant a world to the art and to me.

I've been working on a group of poems about someone who is the last non-plant living being on Earth and I am so grateful to Wayne Holloway-Smith and everybody at The Poetry Review for publishing some poems from the group and I really hope you like this one. poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/from-l...

Shane McCrae takes up the mantle of Dante and turns on its head in NEW AND COLLECTED HELL, his contemporary vision of Hell. Now in paperback. bit.ly/4qUQxJI

I wrote a sonnet about his hands. And I’m grateful to Ken Gordon at The Sonneteer for publishing it. And I hope you like it, I really do. And I’m sorry for making you think about his hands. thesonneteer.substack.com/p/jones-very...

Last year, Omnidawn published a chapbook I wrote, "Two Appearances After the Resurrection," and I'm so grateful! If you want to hear amazing poets, and also me, read from books Omnidawn published at around the same time: today, 1 PM Pacific! I hope to see you there! app.gopassage.com/events/omnid...

I use this video to teach my students about amphibrachs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5Y...

And, breaking into a canter, I set off on the long road south Which was to take me to so many strange places, That room in Cambridge, that room in Cambridge, that room in Cambridge, That room in Cambridge, this room in Cambridge

Onassis.

Jessica Laser's review of "Only Sing" is wonderful and I am so grateful for it! kismet-mag.com/reviews/pani...

Today is the publication date for John Berryman’s "Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs." A few days ago, I read the book for pleasure for the first time. And though I can’t speak to the quality of my introduction, the poems are wonderful. I think you’ll like them.

Thank God I am neither marketable nor likable.

In the--excruciating!--throes of trying to decide whether to keep using Garamond, or switch to EB Garamond.

Zohran!

Hi! Just in case you already have my Gmail address, which I'm phasing out, and want my new email address, it's the same as my Gmail address but with @proton.me at the end of it instead of @gmail.com. That's all! I hope you're having a good weekend!

I have a couple of poems from my new book in the current issue of Image. Thank you to editor @akasomeguy.bsky.social for including these.

On Thursday, October 9th at 7PM I’ll be reading at the Book Culture on W 112th with Phillis Levin and Rosanna Warren in celebration of Rosanna’s brilliant new book, Hindsight. I hope hope hope to see you there! Info and registration here: www.bookculture.com/event/112th-...

My gosh do I love the ending of this Dream Song from "Only Sing" (obliquely, one of Berryman's many Elegies for Delmore Schwartz). Thank you @elizabethscanlon.bsky.social and everybody at @ampoetryreview.bsky.social for publishing it. aprweb.org/poems/long-d...

Howdy, y'all! So, I mentioned a few weeks ago that my son makes rad videos about weather. Well, he has now created a fundraiser to help him fund that work, as well as his life goals in general. Thanks for taking a look. www.gofundme.com/f/empower-ni...

It's nice to be reminded that the iambic pentameter line is one of the most beautiful things to have ever existed.

I try to write poems. I’m working on it. And I’m very grateful to everybody at @newversereview.bsky.social, especially Steve Knepper and Mary Grace Mangano, for publishing, alongside many rad poems, this poem. I tried. I worked on it. And I hope you like it. www.newversereview.com/2-3-shane-mc...

A few months ago, I thought I was done writing these. But maybe not quite yet? I’m so grateful to @bdralyuk.bsky.social and everybody at @nimrodjournal.bsky.social for publishing this sonnet. I hope you like it. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/elizabetha...

A thing arrived in the mail today.

RIP Alice Notley

I guess I miss England pretty hard--I saw a Cadbury Twirl in a bodega this morning and almost started weeping.

This morning, for the first time in a long time--a decade?--I submitted to a journal that only accepts physical submissions (which is also a journal on my list of journals to which I'm afraid to submit), and wow it felt good and weird and good. The tactile! Communication via the mails!

The book comes out in December, but here, now, via the New Yorker, is “Henry’s Ode,” from “Only Sing: 152 Uncollected Dream Songs,” by John Berryman (edited by me). I am so grateful to everyone involved, especially Kevin Young and Hannah Aizenman. Woo, y’all! Woo! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The eye deliberate May qualify the joy And that which we create We also may destroy.

Folks, I'm reading with @rika99.bsky.social on Friday, April 18th. Jason Schneiderman will be the host, and if you're around I hope you can make it if for no other reason than to hear what Erika and Jason have to say. www.nyhistory.org/programs/poe...

Thank you everybody at Action, Spectacle for publishing a few of my poems alongside wonders: www.action-spectacle.com/winter-2025-...

John Berryman has been a central poet in my life for more than half my life. But I never imagined his name and mine would be on the same book cover. And yet here they are, together. The book will be published in December, and I hope you like it. I still can't believe I had anything to do with it.