Poetry Foundation

The Poetry Foundation is proud to announce the recipients of the 2026 Pegasus Awards! 🎉 Robert Pinsky 🎉 Nikki Grimes 🎉 Luis Javier Rodríguez 🎉 Meg Day 🎉 Jason Schneiderman For more details, visit our website https://bit.ly/4x9ME6N Congratulations to this year's honorees!

These gardens grow wild & the birds unfurl their wings into an offering of flight. My cousin knelt in this garden once. –Nome Emeka Patrick with the #PoemOfTheDay on Sylvia Plath's birthday. CW: death. https://bit.ly/4s63Zww

"please point me in a direction where there is no God, / and I will sleep with my feet that way."💥 A.R. Zarif, POETRY Magazine

"Window" by Clare Jones. #PoemOfTheDay Read or listen to the full poem from the current issue of POETRY magazine: https://bit.ly/4sEQuEF

“Come on, Cin. Give me the boy. We’re gonna go watch the game.” The crack of wood against cowhide and cork. Sweat drips like gutters in a summer gale. —Matthew Buchta with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4xICafc

The rat traps emptied, the grain troughs filled. The distance between sheep shed and my own ice-melt dripping on the mat equals the diameter of moonlight squared on his face as he looks up and finds me again. —Nance Van Winckel with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4rukPFd

Join us tomorrow night at the Poetry Foundation for a special opportunity to engage directly with recipients of the 2026 Pegasus Awards! 🏆 Featuring Meg Day, Nikki Grimes, Luis J. Rodriguez, Jason Schneiderman, and a video presentation by Robert Pinsky. Register for free: https://bit.ly/3Wb81I9

Happy 80th birthday to Mary Jo Bang! #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4yRS6fY

More from the mural that just went up @poetry.foundation pls read all of #tilsaotta ‘s work you can find and thank @graywolfpress.bsky.social for publishing translations

In his debut poetry collection, Aleksandar Hemon reckons with what it means to live in a meaningless age. Content note: war and violence Read the essay: https://bit.ly/4dLWN2T

I believe nothing folds easily, but that time will crease— retrain the mind. I believe in the arrowheads of words and I believe in silence. —Kimberly Blaeser with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4rGAHoa

In the latest episode of #PoetryOffTheShelf, Jae Nichelle and host Helena de Groot discuss debt, cartoon crushes, and musical gynecology. 💕 Listen here: https://bit.ly/3WirQNJ

Terrific essay here from @saintsoftness.bsky.social. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/183...

Introduction: Radical Poets of the Midwest What are we living and fighting for, if not—at least in part—for access to the sweet quotidian? www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazi...

October 2026/Poetry Foundation February 1945 Poem in October By Dylan Thomas

MARS Marshall, “Trans American Sonnet” Read or listen to the poem from the October issue of POETRY: https://bit.ly/4hX0HY4

Our bodies spun On swivels of bone & faith, Through a lyric slipknot Of joy, & we knew we were Beautiful & dangerous. —Yusef Komunyakaa with the #PoemOfTheDay on the opening night of the NBA's regular season 🏀 https://bit.ly/3QhktQx

You must be made of money. your parents must have grown on trees. —Jamila Woods with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4AnPGam

Urban Word NYC creates opportunities for young people to hone their creative voices and elevates them to national stages and platforms. Learn more about our grantee-partner: https://bit.ly/4zE3A7f

I have been unpopular with myself, pacing in my small, square room. But my uncle said, “Even in a palace, you can but sleep in one room.” —Koon Woon (1949—2026) https://bit.ly/4yd0nKL

Manny Loley's “Holding This World Together.” Read or listen to the poem in the October issue of POETRY: https://bit.ly/4ynZGhL

Love is boring and passé, all that old baggage, the bloody bric-a-brac, the bad, the gothic, retrograde, obscurantist hum and drum of it needs to be swept away. —Lynn Emanuel with the #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/3yO3vUf

Join us at the Poetry Foundation for a special opportunity to engage directly with recipients of the 2026 Pegasus Awards! 🏆 Featuring Meg Day, Nikki Grimes, Luis J. Rodriguez, Jason Schneiderman, and a video presentation by Robert Pinsky. Register for free: https://bit.ly/3Wb81I9

“& your laugh like an ambulance, / & your laugh like the elephant grass.” — Jenny Browne . . . This poem appeared in Poetry Magazine, 2023. Shared here with deep gratitude.

#tbt: Sue Kwock Kim's "Occupation," first published in the July 1994 issue of Poetry Foundation and later included in "Notes from the Divided Country" (2003), which won the Academy of American Poets (@poetsorg.bsky.social) First Book Award. 📘 https://bit.ly/kimdivided

Read A.V. Marraccini's essay on visiting Helsinki during the season of the dog star: https://bit.ly/3UtWS4J

This new @poetry.foundation piece was also for you, architecture friends. In writing about architecture, I try to situate it in a whole aesthetic frame-- and ideally an unexpected one. I hope this makes the Finnish Midcentury Modern part of a new poetics. I also touch on latent socialist baroques.

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; Lengthen night and shorten day; Every leaf speaks bliss to me Fluttering from the autumn tree. —Emily Brontë with the #PoemOfTheDay 🍂 https://bit.ly/4AhI610

Jason Schneiderman ’98 was awarded the 2026 Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism from the Poetry Foundation for his book “Nothingism: Poetry at the End of Print Culture,” which explores poetry and its relationship to contemporary culture and technology. Read more: english.umd.edu/news/jason-s...

For the Poetry Foundation— “Breathing At the End on the World” — on Auden, Aalto, and a visit to Helsinki in the Dog Days. www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/183...

Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields my brother's sons are gathering stalk and root; small wonder then my children glean in fields they have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit. —Arna Bontemps was born #OnThisDay in 1902. #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4h7PMeM

"Song" by Martha Collins. Read or listen to the poem in the October issue of POETRY: https://bit.ly/47B1M2L

I have two poems in this issue: “A History of Consumption and Production” and “Foxglove and Bog Pimpernel”

Up on the ridge purple thistles snare a silver thread of starlight and try, until dawn, to shake it free. —Nance Van Winckel (1951—2026) https://bit.ly/4y2acLq

“The voices and forms gathered here, collectively, insist on an America that is diverse, that celebrates poetry in many registers.” —Maya Marshall Explore the “Radical Poets of the Midwest” folio and read or listen to the full poems in the October issue of POETRY: https://bit.ly/4zm47L1

Sting in the silver. Ōe says many children were told and some believed that when the war was over the emperor would wipe away their tears with his own hand. —Anne Carson, who received this year's Nobel Prize in Literature. #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4hT8bet

Meet Tariq Thompson, one of our 2026 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows! 🎉 Tariq's poetry treats language as a time capsule, carrying grief, memory, and connection across the distance between writer and reader. Read more about Tariq: https://bit.ly/47FubET

"Ariadne" by Adrienne Su. Read the rest of the poem in the October issue of POETRY: https://bit.ly/47I1LtP

In the latest episode of #PoetryOffTheShelf, Sanam Sheriff and host Helena de Groot discuss pronouns, looking proper, and making an American decision. Listen here: https://bit.ly/4794Nay

I am learning how to call my self, how to put my mouth on whatever i like. —Destiny O. Birdsong with the #PoemOfTheDay on International Lesbian Day https://bit.ly/4rlTkgW

Thank you @poetry.foundation, shout out #tilsaotta & @graywolfpress.bsky.social

Rainbow, by Manny Loley (translated by himself from Diné), in the October 2026 issue of Poetry magazing from @poetry.foundation

Where you shop for your books matters! The Poetry Foundation is proud to partner with @bookshop.org in supporting local, independent bookstores. Subscribe to POETRY magazine to receive an exclusive discount on Bookshop.org and support the bookstores in your community! https://bit.ly/4y9EFHG

Down a road where people are asleep. Towards the moon or the shadows of houses. Towards the songs’ pretended sea. —Amiri Baraka was born #OnThisDay in 1934. #PoemOfTheDay https://bit.ly/4yQ2ViK

Hella! Dark mode on the poem site!

Congratulations, Nikki! The Poetry Foundation has appointed poet-children’s-YA author Nikki Grimes the next Young People’s Poet Laureate. @poetnikki.bsky.social @stacyvwells.bsky.social #KidLit