Category Archives: poems

“On Merrion Street” in the Los Angeles Review

Posted on July 18, 2020 by nancohen

I drafted this poem a few days after meeting up with Eavan Boland for a happy lunch and walk in Dublin between Christmas and New Year’s 2018, and revised it over the next year or so. It felt elegiac then. … Continue reading →

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“Shelter”

Posted on July 18, 2020 by nancohen

A poem about staying “safer at home” during the pandemic: “Shelter” in ROOM: A Sketchbook for Analytic Action.

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The Arkansas International, #8

Posted on April 9, 2020 by nancohen

The Spring 2020 issue of the Arkansas International will be online for a month. It includes some beautiful work, including translations of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey from the forthcoming collection Lean Against This Late Hour (Penguin … Continue reading →

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“Thirty-Year Friendship”

Posted on May 25, 2019 by nancohen

“Thirty-Year Friendship” is the third poem I’ve published so far from my third-book manuscript, which I’ve been working on for several years. It appeared this month in SWWIM Every Day, a thoughtfully and deftly curated (if I do say so … Continue reading →

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“Yes and No”

Posted on January 19, 2019 by nancohen

I published two poems in 2018, “Yes and No” in Ploughshares (not currently available online) and this poem, “A Liking for Clocks,” in Poetry Ireland Review.  These are the first two poems I’ve published from the manuscript I’m working on now, and it was … Continue reading →

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Renga for Obama

Posted on January 31, 2017 by nancohen

The Harvard Review is hosting a celebratory “Renga for Obama” on the conclusion of our 44th president’s second term.  A renga is a Japanese collaborative form consisting of linked stanzas composed in pairs.  A new pair of stanzas appears each day—a traditional haiku(which … Continue reading →

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Poem for January: “Egg”

Posted on January 8, 2017 by nancohen

As I’ve mentioned, most of the poems in Unfinished City began as responses to the parashot, the weekly portions into which Jews divide the first five books of the Bible.  It’s easy to see where some of them came from—the … Continue reading →

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As It Ought to Be

Posted on April 23, 2016 by nancohen

Today, the website As It Ought to Be is featuring my poem “A Newborn Girl at Passover” in their Saturday Poetry Series.

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Prince, 1958-2016

Posted on April 21, 2016 by nancohen

Six years ago, in a brief tribute to the poet Ai, I tried to put into words my sense of the way an artist’s work transforms when the artist’s life is over, and quoted Bishop’s elegy for Lowell: “Sad friend, you … Continue reading →

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“So thou through windows of thine age shalt see…”

Posted on September 14, 2014 by nancohen

It’s 104 degrees outside right now, and the air conditioning is not able to keep up–this afternoon the interior temperature has risen from 78 to 85 over the last few hours.  Our fingers are crossed for the system to hold up … Continue reading →

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