On Poetry

The poems in Mary Jo Bang’s latest collection, “A Film in Which I Play Everyone,” are full of pleasure, color, sound and light — but also torment.

In “Fixer,” his second collection, the poet Edgar Kunz demonstrates a hard familiarity with the gig economy.

A new anthology highlights the charms and drawbacks of very brief verse.

Poetic beginnings — first lines, or first poems in collections — do a lot of work in setting the tone and the reader’s expectations.

A.E. Stallings draws on traditional forms and themes to create poetry that gives heft and shape to the everyday world. “This Afterlife” offers an overview of her career to date.

Jorie Graham’s new book, an omnibus volume of her last four collections, shows that some themes have been present in her career from the start.

Reviews of Brenda Coultas’s “The Writing of an Hour,” Paul Tran’s “All the Flowers Kneeling” and Ryann Stevenson’s “Human Resources.”

There are endless ways to write a poem, but Rilke offered one foolproof formula that echoes throughout several recent collections.

Our poetry columnist writes about Valerie Mejer Caso’s “Edinburgh Notebook” and other works of vicarious grief.

Just like line breaks and spacing decisions, typographical marks can shape how a reader hears the language.