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The Poem Itself (1960) would be an excellent title for a hard-nosed, uncompromising volume of practical criticism. As a title for a volume of translations of poetry in modern European languages, it is rather bolder. When we meet with translations, [...]

Hala Alyan is a licensed clinical psychologist, professor at New York University, and writer. She is the author of the novel Salt Houses (2017), winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Her latest novel, The Arsonists’ City (2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. She is also the author of four award-winning collections of poetry, including The Twenty-Ninth Year (2019). Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Academy of American Poets, LitHub, The New York Times Book Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Following the release of her latest collection, The Moon That Turns You Back (2024), poet and critic Jennifer Lee Tsai spoke to Alyan about the roles of witness, catharsis, and commemoration in her poetry.

The two historical narratives that Ishion Hutchinson braids together in his book-length poem, School of Instructions, are twin educations, each charged with violence. The older history is of the tens of thousands of West Indian soldiers, all volunteers, who fought [...]