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A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025
Edited by the magazine’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, a celebratory selection from one hundred years of influential, entertaining, and taste-making verse in
The New Yorker
Seamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Czesław Miłosz, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, E. E. Cummings, Sharon Olds, Franz Wright, John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Maggie Smith, Kaveh these stellar names make up just a fraction of the wonderfulness that is present in this essential anthology.
The book is organized into sections honoring times of day (“Morning Bell,” “Lunch Break,” “After-Work Drinks,” “Night Shift”), allowing poets from different eras to talk back to one another in the same space, intertwined with chronological groupings from the decades as they march the frothy 1920s and 1930s (“despite the depression,” Young notes), the more serious ’40s and ’50s (introducing us to the early greats of our contemporary poetry, like Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, and Adrienne Rich), the political ’60s and ’70s, the lyrical ’80s and ’90s, and then the 2000s’ with their explosion of greater diversity in the magazine, greater depth and breadth. Inevitably, we see the high points when poems spoke directly into, about, or against the crises of their times—the war poetry of W. H. Auden and Karl Shapiro; the remarkable outpouring of verse after 9/11 (who can forget Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”?); and more recently, stunning poems in response to the cataclysmic events of COVID and the murder of George Floyd.
The magazine’s poetic influence resides not just in this historical and cultural relevance but in sheer human connection, exemplified by the passing verses that became what Young calls “refrigerator poems”: the ones you tear out and affix to the fridge to read again and again over months and years. Our love for that singular Billy Collins or Ada Limón poem—or lines by a new writer you’ve never heard of but will hear much more from in the future—is what has made The New Yorker a great organ for poetry, a mouthpiece for our changing culture and way of life, even a mirror of our collective soul.
Seamus Heaney, Dorothy Parker, Louise Bogan, Louise Glück, Randall Jarrell, Langston Hughes, Derek Walcott, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Merwin, Czesław Miłosz, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Strand, E. E. Cummings, Sharon Olds, Franz Wright, John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros, Amanda Gorman, Maggie Smith, Kaveh these stellar names make up just a fraction of the wonderfulness that is present in this essential anthology.
The book is organized into sections honoring times of day (“Morning Bell,” “Lunch Break,” “After-Work Drinks,” “Night Shift”), allowing poets from different eras to talk back to one another in the same space, intertwined with chronological groupings from the decades as they march the frothy 1920s and 1930s (“despite the depression,” Young notes), the more serious ’40s and ’50s (introducing us to the early greats of our contemporary poetry, like Elizabeth Bishop, W. S. Merwin, and Adrienne Rich), the political ’60s and ’70s, the lyrical ’80s and ’90s, and then the 2000s’ with their explosion of greater diversity in the magazine, greater depth and breadth. Inevitably, we see the high points when poems spoke directly into, about, or against the crises of their times—the war poetry of W. H. Auden and Karl Shapiro; the remarkable outpouring of verse after 9/11 (who can forget Adam Zagajewski’s “Try to Praise the Mutilated World”?); and more recently, stunning poems in response to the cataclysmic events of COVID and the murder of George Floyd.
The magazine’s poetic influence resides not just in this historical and cultural relevance but in sheer human connection, exemplified by the passing verses that became what Young calls “refrigerator poems”: the ones you tear out and affix to the fridge to read again and again over months and years. Our love for that singular Billy Collins or Ada Limón poem—or lines by a new writer you’ve never heard of but will hear much more from in the future—is what has made The New Yorker a great organ for poetry, a mouthpiece for our changing culture and way of life, even a mirror of our collective soul.
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First published February 4, 2025
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The New Yorker
502 books216 followersThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published forty-seven times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 14, 2025
This collection is excellently well-chosen and filled with serendipitous discovery. I read many poems both new to me and ones I recall seeing in the magazine.
It's a must for all lovers of poetry.
It's a must for all lovers of poetry.
February 14, 2025
Thank you Knopf for my free copy. My opinions are my own.
Where to even start? I feel singularly unqualified to review poetry, much less a century of some of the greatest of the great. And by such accomplished poets!!! Let’s just say that these poets have forgotten more about poetry than I will ever know, and I fully enjoyed basking in the fruits of their labor, which falls in all kinds of places across the spectrum of the human existence.
Where to even start? I feel singularly unqualified to review poetry, much less a century of some of the greatest of the great. And by such accomplished poets!!! Let’s just say that these poets have forgotten more about poetry than I will ever know, and I fully enjoyed basking in the fruits of their labor, which falls in all kinds of places across the spectrum of the human existence.
June 19, 2025
I was both daunted and elated by the size of this book. I saw it sitting on the holds shelf at the library from about a mile away. I thought, I bet that's a century worth of poetry right there with the spine doing more work than all the other spines on the shelf.
I had every intention of reading it from beginning to end, but the book fell open to a Jane Kenyon poem, Heavy Summer Rain that completely stopped anything else from happening for a while.
"I miss you steadily, painfully." That's the line that completely consumed me. It's the word, "steadily" that just bowls me over. Most of us are nursing aches caused by loss, and it sometimes becomes the most dependable thing in our lives. I've read quite a bit by Jane Kenyon but somehow missed this poem. Each time I sat down with this book, I started by reading that poem first.
I loved other poems too, such as Mildred Weston's timeless poem, "Public Library," which was written in 1947 but could have been written yesterday and Thomas Lux's poem about maraschino cherries.
It's a hefty book but well worth the read. As a person who reads The New Yorker primarily for poetry and cartoons, I knew I was going to love it before I even opened it. But I didn't realize just how much it was needed at this exact moment in my life.
I had every intention of reading it from beginning to end, but the book fell open to a Jane Kenyon poem, Heavy Summer Rain that completely stopped anything else from happening for a while.
"I miss you steadily, painfully." That's the line that completely consumed me. It's the word, "steadily" that just bowls me over. Most of us are nursing aches caused by loss, and it sometimes becomes the most dependable thing in our lives. I've read quite a bit by Jane Kenyon but somehow missed this poem. Each time I sat down with this book, I started by reading that poem first.
I loved other poems too, such as Mildred Weston's timeless poem, "Public Library," which was written in 1947 but could have been written yesterday and Thomas Lux's poem about maraschino cherries.
It's a hefty book but well worth the read. As a person who reads The New Yorker primarily for poetry and cartoons, I knew I was going to love it before I even opened it. But I didn't realize just how much it was needed at this exact moment in my life.
May 9, 2025
Had to give it back to the library one third read and heavily covet my own copy, but like another reviewer said, sublime! I was skeptical of the arranging at first but it really adds to the experience of reading the whole anthology through. Five stars!
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July 2, 2025This might be a surprise but I am a big fan of The New Yorker magazine and have been for a long time. I grew up interested in journalism and publications like this since my first journalism class back in middle school. This magazine was my entry into the world of the best writers, poets, critics, commentators, photographers, and artists. From here, my interest in books and culture exploded. In 2025, The New Yorker is celebrating 100 years of publication and released two commemorative collections: A Century of Poetry and A Century of Fiction. I bought both of these books and since it was a pretty expensive purchase, I wanted to make sure that I read both of these.
After a month of daily reading, I finished A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025, edited by Kevin Young. I have read poetry collections that were edited and selected by Kevin Young before so it was nice getting back into his mind. This collection is organized into 15 sections that are a mix of aesthetic themes and decades: Morning Bell, 1920s & 1930s, Lunch Break, 1940s & 1950s, After-Work Drink, 1960s & 1970s, Evening Walk, The Eighties, Last Train Home, The Nineties, Late Shift, The Aughts (2000s-early 2010s), Night Song, The Teens & Twenties, and Dawning. I enjoy the way that it's structured between the feelings the poems are meant to evoke and the way that form changed through the years.
There was obviously more diversity in the sections that explored aesthetics and feelings than there were in each decade. Like in the fiction collection, the coolest part is when you come across an iconic name that you might not seek out on your own. Like for example, Camille t. Dungy, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, and W.B. Yeats are not poets that I have gone out of my way to read but seeing their work here was interesting. Even reading poems I've never read by poets I'm familiar with like Sylvia Plath and Grace Paley were a lot of fun.
At some point I got a little tired of poetry though but I marked the poems that spoke to me the most. For as long as I own this book, I will never read it all the way through like I did the first time around but I look forward to picking this book up multiple times through the years to find a poem that speaks to me.
After a month of daily reading, I finished A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025, edited by Kevin Young. I have read poetry collections that were edited and selected by Kevin Young before so it was nice getting back into his mind. This collection is organized into 15 sections that are a mix of aesthetic themes and decades: Morning Bell, 1920s & 1930s, Lunch Break, 1940s & 1950s, After-Work Drink, 1960s & 1970s, Evening Walk, The Eighties, Last Train Home, The Nineties, Late Shift, The Aughts (2000s-early 2010s), Night Song, The Teens & Twenties, and Dawning. I enjoy the way that it's structured between the feelings the poems are meant to evoke and the way that form changed through the years.
There was obviously more diversity in the sections that explored aesthetics and feelings than there were in each decade. Like in the fiction collection, the coolest part is when you come across an iconic name that you might not seek out on your own. Like for example, Camille t. Dungy, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, and W.B. Yeats are not poets that I have gone out of my way to read but seeing their work here was interesting. Even reading poems I've never read by poets I'm familiar with like Sylvia Plath and Grace Paley were a lot of fun.
At some point I got a little tired of poetry though but I marked the poems that spoke to me the most. For as long as I own this book, I will never read it all the way through like I did the first time around but I look forward to picking this book up multiple times through the years to find a poem that speaks to me.
March 23, 2025
This is a fantastic book. This appears to be an anthology of poetry published by authors who published in The New Yorker but not all poems in this book were published in The New Yorker. One of my pleasures is tracking down the original poem as published in The New Yorker. Sometimes there are accompanying graphics! Sometimes there are wonderful discoveries like Elinor Wylie's "Portrait" or other 'backstory' publications. There is enough in The New Yorker for a second book with chapters on some of the authors, like Marianne Moore or W.H. Auden for example.
November 27, 2025
Confession: decades ago, visiting a young lady in her college digs, I found New Yorkers scattered around her room. Trying to be impressive, I stuttered out: "I-I love the poems they publish!" She said, "Oh yeah? I just get it mainly for the cartoons; my father had one published once."
We survived college and went our separate ways, but I still had a NYer subscription for the poems...and the cartoons. When I got Kevin Young's 2025 compilation of NYer poems as a gift, I was amazed to see that I recognized a lot of them, what he calls "refrigerator poems," ones meaningful to me that I tore out and collected. The massive number of poems is nicely grouped "thematically," rather than chronologically, in this volume.
I missed seeing Wallace Stevens, Tim Seibles, Jack Myers, W.D. Snodgrass or Robert Wallace, but maybe they didn't submit to the New Yorker much; on the other hand, nice to see Louise Glück, Kay Ryan, a lot of Richard Wilbur, William Stafford and Mark Strand.
The end grouping is thought-provoking: Merwin, Strand, Dungy, ending with Limón's "The End of Poetry." Then you get to Kevin Young's picture on the cover jacket flap: is he nodding his head toward Jimi Hendrix whose visage appears over his right shoulder?!?
We survived college and went our separate ways, but I still had a NYer subscription for the poems...and the cartoons. When I got Kevin Young's 2025 compilation of NYer poems as a gift, I was amazed to see that I recognized a lot of them, what he calls "refrigerator poems," ones meaningful to me that I tore out and collected. The massive number of poems is nicely grouped "thematically," rather than chronologically, in this volume.
I missed seeing Wallace Stevens, Tim Seibles, Jack Myers, W.D. Snodgrass or Robert Wallace, but maybe they didn't submit to the New Yorker much; on the other hand, nice to see Louise Glück, Kay Ryan, a lot of Richard Wilbur, William Stafford and Mark Strand.
The end grouping is thought-provoking: Merwin, Strand, Dungy, ending with Limón's "The End of Poetry." Then you get to Kevin Young's picture on the cover jacket flap: is he nodding his head toward Jimi Hendrix whose visage appears over his right shoulder?!?
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May 20, 2025I loved 8 poems in the first 200 pages and none in the next 250. I gave up not quite half way tbrough. Editor Kevin Young, bless him, has a tolerance for the multipage, open form poem. I do not. Write a letter to friend, people, and spare the pages of print for Terence Hayes, Ada Limon, and other poets who exercise some restraint and understand the world is burning.
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June 3, 2025I definitely didn’t read every poem in this book but I DID keep it out of the New York library system for the weeks that I tried to. Sorry NYPL users. Great collection though and really fun to dip into. If I had more space I’d buy a copy!
March 13, 2025
What a sublime triumph to collect, never mind so deftly arrange such a compilation. It’s not a dictatorial anthology, it’s an experience.
August 8, 2025
Phenomenal overview -- I'm inclined to call this the Holy Grail of poetry! And...edited by my fellow former Kansan! What's not to love?!
October 14, 2025
This is an anthology worth keeping on the shelf, to be revisited time and again—each return revealing a poem that resonates anew
Want to read
November 2, 2025Brooklyn Public Library
March 22, 2025
I love the descriptive imagery and humor of most of these poems. My favorite poems are about food. I love the poem "Zucchini", because I think the of image of frying zucchini with onions and garlic is delicious. I also enjoy the poem "Clamming". I enjoy eating clams, and I would enjoy diving for clams just like in this poem. There is a poem called "Blackberrying" by Syvia Plath. I would love to spend a day picking blackberries for a dessert.
The descriptive imagery is also expressed in poems about places I would love to visit and experiences that are personal to me There is a poem about Wales by Allen Ginsberg. This poem has images of mountains, flowers and animals that I would love to see. There is a poem about the city of Nashville. This poem has vivid images of food and references to country music that I would enjoy listening to. There is a poem entitled "Wheelchairs". This poem has an image of people racing in their wheelchairs. I use a wheelchair, but I struggle to push my wheelchair, so it is unique for me to read about using a wheelchair from a different perspective. There is a poem entitled "Elegy for The Giants". I love the nostalgic tone of this poem and the baseball imagery.
I love the humor in two of these poems. There is a poem entitled "Reasons to Log Off". This poem is funny to me, because I agree that spending too much time online can be a prosaic experience. because of the bombardment of information. There is a sonnet about Facebook that echoes the same sentiment shared in "Reasons to Log Off." All of these poems motivate me to continue writing my own poetry.
The descriptive imagery is also expressed in poems about places I would love to visit and experiences that are personal to me There is a poem about Wales by Allen Ginsberg. This poem has images of mountains, flowers and animals that I would love to see. There is a poem about the city of Nashville. This poem has vivid images of food and references to country music that I would enjoy listening to. There is a poem entitled "Wheelchairs". This poem has an image of people racing in their wheelchairs. I use a wheelchair, but I struggle to push my wheelchair, so it is unique for me to read about using a wheelchair from a different perspective. There is a poem entitled "Elegy for The Giants". I love the nostalgic tone of this poem and the baseball imagery.
I love the humor in two of these poems. There is a poem entitled "Reasons to Log Off". This poem is funny to me, because I agree that spending too much time online can be a prosaic experience. because of the bombardment of information. There is a sonnet about Facebook that echoes the same sentiment shared in "Reasons to Log Off." All of these poems motivate me to continue writing my own poetry.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews