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#Featured Reads3

Issue 152

The Underside of a Wing

There are at least nine species of albatross who endanger; an albatross is a bird who will always bring you down. Read more.

Paola Ferrante in
Issue 152

Solitaire

Who wears a dress like that to a wedding? A girl whose father missed too many ballet recitals, that’s who. Read more.

Jeanie Keogh in
Issue 152

As Animals

My skin itched, but that’s how you often feel in the countryside, like a person or animal watches you.
Read more.

Elly Graff in

#Online Exclusives3

The Writer’s Corner

November 19, 2019

Finding the Form with Paola Ferrante

“When I dropped out of my Master’s, I remember it was like living underwater, but there were specific details…that really encapsulated how alone and unable to talk to anyone I felt due to the sense of stigma of having a mental health disability in academia.” The bones of “The Underside of a Wing” were always […]

Paola Ferrante in
November 14, 2019

Finding the Form with Lorin Jane Medley

“Who stays, who goes, and why? Who and what survives?” Shikata ga nai (the poem) emerged in 2012 as an exercise in accentual verse. Four years later, I extracted its first-line imperative, ditched the rest, and began again. Record this: route rail-beds to carry coal. From prosody to local history: on my way to work, […]

Lorin Jane Medley in
November 12, 2019

A Burst of Praise for the Winners of the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest 2019

As always, reading the 300 some poems submitted to the Occasional Verse contest—and spending an afternoon in conversation about the 25 or so on our longlist—was one of the year’s great pleasures. TNQ’s OV contest is unusual in that it’s a poetry contest judged mostly by non-poets, many of them friends and relations of the […]

Kim Jernigan in