The Poetry Corner

I'm thrilled to launch The Poetry Corner with a close reading of Bianca Stone's poem "What's Poetry Like?" — first published in The New Yorker on August 21, 2023, and later collected in her book The Near and Distant World (Tin House).

This poem opens with a deceptively simple question posed by a grinning teenager, and from there unspools into a meditation on language, meaning, and the strange, unfinished work of writing itself. It's the perfect poem to kick off a group built around slow, careful reading — plenty to dig into on the page, and plenty of room for disagreement.

Bianca Stone is a Vermont-based poet, visual artist, and the current Poet Laureate of Vermont (2024–2029). She is the author of several poetry collections, including Someone Else's Wedding Vows (2014), The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (2018), What Is Otherwise Infinite (2022) — winner of the Vermont Book Award — and The Near and Distant World (2026). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, and The Nation, among others. She co-founded the Ruth Stone House, a nonprofit dedicated to poetry and the arts, where she teaches and hosts the Ode & Psyche podcast.