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Featured highlights ...
An Audible Anthology
An archive of Atlantic poetry from 1995 to the present, read aloud by the author.
Soundings
An innovative series of poetry readings in which three or four contemporary poets are invited to record a reading of the same classic poem.
John Updike, "Pygmalion" (July 1981)
"He could not know the world, was his fear, unless a woman translated it for him."
Kay Ryan has been awarded the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for 2004.
Read and listen to four of Ryan's poems that originally appeared in The Atlantic: "Hailstorm" (2003), "Among English Verbs" (1998), "This Life" (1993), and "Emptiness" (1993).
Charles Dickens, "George Silverman's Explanation" (January, February, March 1868)
"My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in Preston."
Henri Cole has received the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the country's largest prize for a single work, for his collection Middle Earth. Two poems from the book, "Landscape with Deer and Figure" and "Black Camellia," originally appeared in
The Atlantic.
Paul Theroux, "The Johore Murders" (March 1977)
"If the second victim had not been an American, I probably would not have given the Johore murders a second thought, and I certainly would not have been involved in the business."
The Difficult Grandeur of Robert Lowell
Writings by and about Robert Lowell offer insight into the life and poetry of a tormented legend.
Jane Smiley, "Long Distance" (January 1987)
"In the five months that Kirby knew Mieko in Japan, and in the calls between them since, she has never shed a tear, but now she weeps with absolute abandon, in long, heaving sobs."
Can Poetry Matter? (May 1991)
Poetry has vanished as a cultural force in America. If poets venture outside their confined world, they can work to make it essential once more. An article by Dana Gioia, who was recently nominated by George W. Bush to direct the National Endowment for the Arts.
Eudora Welty, "A Worn Path" (February 1941)
"Far out in the country there was an old Negro woman with her head tied in a red rag, coming along a path through the pine woods. Her name was Phoenix Jackson. She was very old, and small, and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows."
A Notorious Trifler
For Ogden Nash, humor was "a shield, a weapon, a survival kit." Herewith a small selection, previously unpublished. By Gary Cohen.
Tim O'Brien, "The People We Marry" (January 1992)
Magic was his life. His marriage was a trick he did not want to explain.
Those Who Make Poems (March 1942)
In 1942 Carl Sandburg offered his thoughts to would-be poets.
Edith Wharton, "The House of the Dead Hand" (August 1904)
"The hand was a woman's—a dead drooping hand, which hung there convulsed helpless, as though it had been thrust forth in denunciation of some evil mystery within the house, and had sunk struggling into death."
Poetry Out Loud
One of the biggest changes in modern poetry is its escape from the page to the performance. By Peter Davison.
Edith Wharton, "The Long Run" (February 1912)
"'In our case there was no dividing line between loving and liking.... Ours was a robust passion that could give an open-eyed account of itself, and not a beautiful madness shrinking away from the proof.'"
The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Americans today are finding new inspiration in Julia Ward Howe's anthem—originally published in The Atlantic in 1862 to rally Union troops.
Mark Twain, "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut" (June 1876)
"The door opened, and a shriveled, shabby dwarf entered.... This vile bit of human rubbish seemed to bear a sort of remote and ill-defined resemblance to me!"
Madness in the New Poetry (January 1965)
"Is it only coincidence that poetry in the last two decades has come into the full uses of madness as of an instrument?" By Peter Davison.
Vladimir Nabokov, "Father's Butterflies" (April 2000)
"The last important unpublished fiction by Nabokov." Translated from the Russian by Nabokov's son, Dmitri.
Billy Collins, Poet Laureate
Several of Collins's poems have appeared in The Atlantic over the past few years—"The Iron Bridge," "Snow Day," "Man Listening to Disc," and "Invention." All of them can be heard read aloud by the author.
Vladimir Nabokov, "Cloud, Castle, Lake" (June 1941) and "The Aurelian" (November 1941)
In 1941, The Atlantic Monthly became the first English-language magazine to publish Vladimir Nabokov's fiction and poetry. As a companion to the April, 2000, issue (see the editors' introduction) here are the first two short stories by Nabokov to appear in The Atlantic.
Flashbacks: Henry James
A selection of pieces by and about Henry James, including his first short story to appear in the magazine (in 1865) and the first installment of Portrait of a Lady, which was serialized in the magazine in 1880-81.
Recollecting Longfellow
In The Atlantic's early years, he was the poet of the age. But was he a great poet? David Barber introduces a selection of Longfellow's poems that were originally published in The Atlantic.
Flashbacks: Louisa May Alcott
Four Atlantic short stories demonstrate Alcott's little-known penchant for romantic fantasy.
Robert Frost in The Atlantic
The first three poems—and one that got away—introduced and read aloud by Peter Davison.
Emily Dickinson (Un)discovered
In 1891, shortly after the posthumous publication of Emily Dickinson's
poetry, Thomas Wentworth Higginson recalled his correspondence with the
reclusive poet and reproduced many of her letters and early poems.
Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (February 1902)
A memoir of the author's friendship with the bard from Brooklyn, which considers Whitman's unique place in American literature. By John Townsend Trowbridge.
Volume One, Number One (November 1857)
These poems, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and John Greenleaf Whittier, appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly's first issue.
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In the October 2004 issue ...
NEW FICTION
The Real Thing
Joseoph O'Neill reviews William Trevor's short story collection A Bit on the Side.. By Joseph O'Neill.
FICTION
Florence of Arabia (Part II)
One woman's crusade to bring female emancipation to the Middle East. A short story. By Christopher Buckley.
POETRY
Progress
By Leonard Cochran.
POETRY
Praise
By Laurie Lamon.
POETRY
Bamboo
By David Solway.
Recently ...
POETRY
Peaceable Kingdom
[with audio] By Henry Taylor.
FICTION
Florence of Arabia
How one woman (plus a disgraced Green Beret, a shameless PR lackey, and the wife of a sheikh) brought the Middle East to the brink of female emancipation. A short story. By Christopher Buckley.
FICTION
The One in White
"Captain," I say, "you've got about two hundred Mexican soldiers waiting for you in the plaza." By Robert Olen Butler.
POETRY
Denial
[with audio] By Leonard Nathan.
POETRY
Gift
By Brooks Haxton.
FICTION
Until Gwen
Your father looks down at the gun in his hand. "This going to fire?" By Dennis Lehane.
FICTION
Foaling Season
We could dress Sheila Altman in my sister's clothes and sell her my sister's horse, but what could she understand about the way things worked? By Aryn Kyle.
Royal Pain
Further adventures of Rick Renard. A short story. By Christopher Buckley.
FICTION
An Incomplete Map of the Northern Polarity
If you were to ask George why he loves Margaret, he would say, "Because she's so mean to me." By Nathan Roberts.
Scrutiny On the Bounty: Captain Bligh's Secret Logbook
By Christopher Buckley.
FICTION
The Red Carpet
What if, after all his talk and boasting, she disgraced him as only she could? By Lavanya Sankaran.
Yao's Chick
Li En minced no words: in Mandarin she told the truth: "I hope to become Yao Ming's wife" By Max Apple.
FICTION
Ghost-Birds
What we think is a gesture of freedom is a symptom of our cage. By Nicolas Pizzolatto.
Mudlavia
A short story. By Elizabeth Stuckey-French.
Love Me
A short story. By Garrison Keillor.
Monstress
A short story. By Lysley Tenorio.
A Good Country
A short story. By Geeta Sharma Jensen.
We Have a Pope!
A short story. By Christopher Buckley.
What Is Visible
A Short Story. By Kimberly Elkins.
Varieties of Religious Experience
A short story. By John Updike.
Dancing Lessons
A short story. By Liza Ward.
The Treatment
A short story. By Roxana Robinson.
A Notorious Trifler
For Ogden Nash, humor was "a shield, a weapon, a survival kit." Herewith a small selection, previously unpublished. By Gary Cohen.
Report From Junction
A short story. By Brad Vice.
Heaven
A short story. By Steven Barthelme.
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INTERVIEWS
Veiled Optimism
Christopher Buckley, the author of Florence of Arabia, talks about women's lib, exploding camels, and the making of the modern Middle East. By Benjamin Healy.
INTERVIEWS
Stories to Break Our Hearts
Bret Anthony Johnston talks about the fiction of grief and loss, skateboarding, and choosing a hometown setting for his first collection of stories. By Curtis Sittenfeld.
INTERVIEWS
Grappling With Haiti’s Beasts
Edwidge Danticat talks about reconnecting with her homeland—and coming to terms with its legacy of violence—through fiction. By Dana Rousmaniere.
INTERVIEWS
From Toronto With Love
David Bezmozgis talks about his sudden literary success and his first collection of stories, a wry and intimate portrait of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family. By Adam Baer.
INTERVIEWS
Hookers, Guns, and Money
Dennis Lehane talks about Mystic River, Hollywood, and "fiction of mortal event"
FLASHBACKS
Transcripts of a Troubled Mind
The short, sad life of Breece D'J Pancake, whose writings in The Atlantic brought to life the dissipated Appalachian world in which he was raised. Introduction by Tim Heffernan.
INTERVIEWS
Jazz, Flappers, and Magazines
Thomas Mallon talks about his new novel, Bandbox—a madcap caper through the zany publishing world of 1920s New York.
INTERVIEWS
Learning in Public
Zoë Heller, the author of What Was She Thinking?, talks about trying a new point of view, and how journalism prepared her for fiction
.
INTERVIEWS
Language Makes the Senses One
Peter Davison talks with the poet Stanley Plumly, who believes that "language, at its best, is not easy"
INTERVIEWS
An Aesthetics of Inadequacy
Alan Shapiro, the author of Song and Dance, talks about poetry as an expression of mourning. By Eric McHenry.
UNBOUND FICTION
Francs
By Edith Pearlman.
UNBOUND FICTION
The House on Lunt Avenue
UNBOUND FICTION
The Result
UNBOUND FICTION
Initiation
UNBOUND FICTION
Learning Japanese
UNBOUND FICTION
A Place of Safety
UNBOUND FICTION
Sign of the Times
UNBOUND FICTION
I Was Just Looking
UNBOUND FICTION
Daniel Wentworth
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