Former Missouri Poet Laureate Maryfrances Wagner writes about the inspiration she takes from a favorite poet, Williams Carlos ...

Writer Michael Salinger has some unexpected advice for anyone who wants to start writing: don't — at least not right away.

Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle ... It only takes one to make life more complete. A picture: One of my favorite pictures is of Sandy when she was three or four. I didn’t meet her ...

free verse poems don't follow any obvious rules. Instead they often follow the rhythms of natural speech. So that's the way that we speak in everyday life with our friends and family.

And if you ask me how, I do not know. I only feel it, and I’m torn in two. Seamus Heaney’s love-poem to marriage, The Skunk, combines exile and erotica, moving from an American wilderness ...