Assemble this in eight straightforward steps.
Start with a fish stock, made the day before.
The driver has arrived but, sadly, drunk.
We'll need some disinfectant for the floor.

Ensure all surfaces are clean and dry.
There's been a problem, Madam, I'm afraid!
We'd better have the manhole cover up.
Apologies, the doctor's been delayed.

I'd love to bring a friend, he's so depressed.
They've put you on the camp bed in the hall.
There's just one table left, perhaps you'd share?
I know it's midnight, but I had to call...

On my blog I run a project called the Author Almanac - articles to commemorate the birthdays or anniversaries of significant authors.

How did I get here? How can this happen? Who’s in charge of this mess?

Ted Hughes's ‘Bayonet Charge’ joins the chorus of writers looking for answers.

https://a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/10/28/28-10-ted-hughes/

(and of course, some of you might realise it was Sylvia Plath's birthday yesterday: there's an entry for her, too - based on the poem, 'Elm'.

Above the quiet dock in mid night,
Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height,
Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away
Is but a child’s balloon, forgotten after play.

hi everyone, I just started recently getting into poetry and I was wondering if there are any recommendations for poetry books, poets, or how-to poetry books that can help guide me on how to format poem and overall just get a better sense of how to write a poem? thanks!

Seen in "Light verse from the floating world: an anthology of premodern Japanese senryuu" by Makoto Ueda.

Additional info regarding the poem as it's followed in the book:

In the government’s eyes, this and other five senryu in the sequence had gone too far. He was arrested by the authorities; a few months later, he died in jail.
Censorship became even more severe after Japan entered World War II in 1941. No work of senryu, or of any genre of literature for that matter, could be published unless it explicitly promoted the government’s wartime policies. The end of the war in August 1945, therefore, came as a relief for most senryu writers. Their reaction was immediate. Nearly twenty senryu groups were founded, or resumed activities, between August and December of that year.

I am not a professional translator, but off the definition of mogu (the verb of which moida is the past tense; i.e. to pluck (especially by twisting from a tree)) I believe plucked would be a more faithfully visceral translation than turned. Additionally, kaeshi is more returning than sending.

Also, just something I learned by looking up the word maruta for adding to my anki deck: during WW2, Japan's notorious Unit 731 would refer to their human test subjects as maruta (logs) as well.

title shortened for space

A pretty straight-forward question for those who write free verse / non-met. I'm interested to know what your process is from start to completion of your poems, how do you construct and complete your poetry?

I've been writing non-met for quite a while and am interested to hear how closely my approach matches that of others.

The rhythm being at the phrase level I'll often start off with a rhythmically awkward and/or small piece, and gradually shape words and phrases (grow) the poem until it is rhythmically satisfying and has no obvious problems. I'll often go through many, many iterations where I re-write the poem.

How does one live on?

Seconds, minutes, years

And you, simply gone

Do you know of my fears?

Whiling days away in tears.

I'm tired

Note: sprezzatura is an Italian word referring to an apparently effortless grace; the art of making something difficult look easy; or maintaining a nonchalant demeanor while performing a challenging task.

In love with this line: "I drank an entire language and flung tar at whatever moved"!!!!!!!!

Bob Hicok is a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and recipient of the Bobbitt Prize from the Library of Congress, he’s also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and eight Pushcart Prizes, and his poems have been selected for inclusion in nine volumes of The Best American Poetry. This is one of four new poems in Discordia Review / Fellow Travellers.

I've always loved his writing; it reminds me of someone like Ron Padgett, or John Ashbery in a folksy mood. I respect too that despite how articulate and intellectual he comes across in interviews, he became a poet and published very successfully before ever having taken any kind of university degree. Cool guy!

This is the preface to Blake's long poem 'Milton: A Poem in Two Books', not to be confused with Blake's much longer poem 'Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion'. It most likely hints at the apocryphal story of Jesus accompanied Joseph of Arimathea visiting England before his years of public ministry. Blake has fascinated me for a long time, and this is one of the little gems I recently found.