With beautiful skin, a foreign language of skin, a surface heretofore unknown and pliant—   Oh, I am pursuing two contradictory directions at once because I am curious      We woke &nbs…

By Elijah Sparkman   Peter Markus lives downriver. I live in Hamtramck, MI. Sometimes we meet in the middle and play tennis in southwest Detroit. We talk. A lot of what we talk about are the t…

Left alone, an empty jug will replenish, so it has been written; mirrors will cast flashes from one’s past; an apple will bleed; an acorn will swell into a giant. How dependable is the behav…

Happy birthday, Wallace Stevens!

Happy birthday, Big Other contributor Heller Levinson! Celebrate by reading these five Levinson poems, which we published in 2024! The poems were subsequently featured in Levinson’s Crossfall…

Beyond The Zero · Episode

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We are excited to announce the deadline and guidelines for the 2026 Big Other Book Awards! This marks the eighth annual presentation of the awards, which aim to recognize excellence in liter…

WINNER OF THE CATHERINE DOCTOROW INNOVATIVE FICTION PRIZEA technocratic collapse erases an obscure poet from existence, she and her pet moss ball refuse to disappearMarimo, Mon Amour is a surreal, con...

Einspänner. A word with dual meanings—it’s a one-horse carriage or else it’s a hot espresso dolloped with cold whipped cream. This word conjures up the image of a coffee shop after yesteryea…

Poetry of the shifting architecture of a world we think we knowAcclaimed author Rae Armantrout's remarkable new collection Safe Rooms, explores the undercurrents of modern life with an unflinching eye...

Olsen (Absolute Away) gives voice to outsider artist Henry Darger, who died in 1973, in this admirable narrative. From a Chicago...

1. Looming  the dark riddle repeated harbor sky an episode    gradual but less than as if scooped from blue    neither recollected nor answered     as if a laminate hovers over the dark ridd…

Happy birthday, William Carlos Williams, whose radical proposition placed imagination at the heart of reality: a way of seeing the world with greater intensity. For Williams, poetry describes the w…

R.I.P., Annie Dillard, one of the great writers of attention, astonishment, and wakefulness, a lyrical contemplative who spent her life teaching us and showing us how to look harder, see more, and …

R.I.P., Annie Dillard, one of the great writers of attention, astonishment, and wakefulness, a lyrical contemplative who spent her life teaching us and showing us how to look harder, see more, and …

WASHINGTON—As they reminisced 20 years later about a devastating and historic national tragedy, Americans reportedly took note Saturday of how the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were the last time the cou...