Last week, Ian Segal, of the poetry department, exchanged e-mails with Barbara Ras, whose poem "Washing the Elephant" recently appeared in the magazine. Ras's new collection, "The Last Skin," will be ...

John Godfrey Saxe (1816–1869) was a New England poet and comic wit — of the kind much invited to be an after-dinner speaker. James Thomas Fields remains the model of such figures in that era (and so ...

Inspired by a Rumi poem based on the parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” Javaherbin offers a lively take on a classic story about the folly of a limited perspective. When a merchant named ...