Beautiful & Pointless: A Guide to Modern Poetry

(Harper)

The author aims to take some of the mystery and fear out of reading modern poetry. In this witty guide, Orr tries to give readers a “sense of what modern poets think about, [and] how those poets talk about what they’re thinking about.” Orr is the poetry columnist for The New York Times Book Review and a former Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.

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The October 2025 cover of PAW, featuring an illustration of a woman dressed like Superman, but the S on her chest is a dollar sign.
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October 2025

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott ’92; President Eisgruber ’83 defends higher ed; Julia Ioffe ’05 explains Russia.