‘I’d much prefer to be a good bad poet than a bad good poet, if you know what I mean,’ he says. “An ode is a way of getting under the skin of reality,” says James Parker, whose new book, “Get Me ...

James Parker finds inspiration for odes in small and large things: history, America, brain farts, his flip phone, Pablo Neruda, meditation. The Atlantic staff writer’s book Get Me Through the Next ...

The cover of "Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes" and author James Parker. (Courtesy of W.W. Norton & Company and Edward Boches) Click here for the original audio. In "Get Met Through The Next Five ...

“I’m moved by how hard it is to be young,” Sharon Olds says, sitting in the courtyard of her New York University faculty housing building, where she moved two years ago after 45 years in the same ...