summer songs: weekly

prompt

We hope these prompts by Diane Seuss have been a source of inspiration.

Our final prompt speaks to Lyn Hejinian’s elegy “Ponderable.”

“How could I have known I would need to remember your laughter,”
Lauren K. Alleyne

“Another Elegy”
Jericho Brown

“Elegy with Apples, Pomegranates, Bees, Butterflies, Thorn Bushes, Oak, Pine, Warblers, Crows, Ants, and Worms”
Hayan Charara

“Elegy for my husband”
Toi Derricotte

“26”
Rachel Eliza Griffiths

“My Dead Friends”
Marie Howe

“[When night draws on, remembering keeps me wakeful]”
al-Khansāʾ

“Little Box”
Marilyn Nelson

“Elegy with Clothes”
Bianca Stone

“Foreign Wife Elegy”
Yuko Taniguchi

“Atlantic Elegy”
Julie Marie Wade

from the archive

Former Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress Robert Hayden speaking before a crowd.

the art of losing

 In a way, the process of grief, I have found, can mirror that of writing.

Read an essay by Academy Chancellor Kevin Young from The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing

elegy & eros

Nothing else cries or laughs the way we do.

“Elegy and Eros: Configuring Grief”

An essay by David Baker from Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2007).

pick of the week

Tonight at 9 p.m. ET, tune in to watch former U.S. Poet Laureate and former Academy Chancellor Joy Harjo deliver The Community Library’s annual Hemingway Distinguished Lecture. Presented each July, the Hemingway Distinguished Lecture celebrates the power of words during the month of Ernest Hemingway’s birth and death.

the glimpse

The more I’ve stayed with poetry and devoted my life to poetry, I’ve also come to appreciate a very particular kind of silence that can happen within it.

Camille Rankine and Solmaz Sharif on silence in the latest episode of The Glimpse, produced by the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation.

literary seminars

Explore Rumi’s views on divine love, heartache, ecstasy, and liberation with Haleh Liza Gafori.

Three sessions: August 6, 13, & 20
2:30–3:45 p.m. EDT 
Live over Zoom with recordings available

2025 Ambroggio Prize: $1,000 publication prize given for a book-length poetry manuscript originally written in Spanish and with an English translation. Giannina Braschi will judge. Read the full guidelines and apply by September 15.

2025 Academy of American Poets First Book Award: Winner receives $5,000, publication by Graywolf Press, and a six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center. Former Chancellor Alberto Ríos will judge. Apply here by September 1.