Poetry Foundation Magazine, Volume 227, Number 3, December 2025

by Adrian Matejka (Editor)

POETRY December 2025 Featuring Arthur Sze, Terrance Hayes, Lesyk Panasiuk, tr. by Katie Farris & Ilya Kaminsky, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Khadijah Queen, and Omar Musa. Plus, a Not Too Hard to Master on Common Meter by Lindsay Turner and three essays on place by Diana Arterian and more.

Genres: Poetry

98 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2025

About the author

Adrian Matejka was born in Nuremberg, Germany but grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devils Garden, won the 2002 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He is a Cave Canem fellow and is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2010, Crab Orchard Review, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he serves as Poetry Editor for Souwester."

Reviews

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I started this edition, I was anticipating just 2 stars, maybe 3, but I misjudged. The beginning poems were largely not to my taste, but the rest of this is excellent. Two poets, in particular, Shlagha Borah and Bianca Stone, are standouts. They have two poems each in this edition and I reread all four three or four times over to soak them up, to let to them permeate. Of the essays, I particularly liked Diana Arterian and Leonora Simonovis’ works.

[₊✩‧₊˚Aria ʚ♡ɞ Nichole˚₊✩‧₊ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. Beautiful collection.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good essays at the end really did it for me