For Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher, poetry was simply writing that “fails” to reach the end of the line. For W.H. Auden, a poet, poetry was that which “makes nothing happen”. Arnold Bennett, a writer, ...

1. Sometimes I see a poem in Slate or another magazine, and it doesn’t do a thing for me. Half of the time I can’t figure out what it means—what is that all about? Generalizing won’t do. We’d have to ...

"Minnesota Blue," a wistful poem that celebrates the state's golden fields of wheat and corn shimmering in the early morn, was written by a singer-songwriter in Hawaii who left Minnesota in 1958.