Mantis is a literary journal dedicated to bringing the best new poetry and poetry in translation to readers all over the world.


Current Issue


Mantis 22

eccentric/eclectic/electric/ekphrastic

dis.orientations

disillusion, dissolution

visceral;velocities

()bservations


Mantis Online


  • Mantis 21 Cover

    Mantis 21

    Exchanging Cups: Contemporary Sake Poetry
    To Raise a Glass, or Down It: Poems for Our Spirits
    Poetry in Translation
    Poetry from Ukraine
    New Poetry in English

  • Mantis 20

    Mantis at 20
    New Poetry
    Translation
    Kevin Bennett

  • Mantis 19

    New Poetry
    Translation
    2020: Poetry of Protest
    Multilingualism
    A Tribute to Eavan Boland

  • Mantis 18

    New Poetry
    Translation
    Heather Dohollau
    West Coast Poetry
    Poems through Amherst College
    The Embodied Mind


20 Years of Mantis



Spotlight: Special Sections


Is a poem, then, not the mind embodied? Does not the form, the content of a poem capture a foray into the most intimate moments and reflections of what we are, communicated across time and distance through the medium of language?

To write is to write in fire.

Fire trails along the letters,
and the twists and turns at the ends of them
are fire.

Rivulets of fire are along the writing.

I strike with the pen,
then fire leaps up and
smoke rises into the room.

The page is scorched.
The great book
is to be written.

That lion constellate,
Whose scenery is Betelgeuse and Mars,
Hunts without respite among fixed stars.
And they prevail: to his undoing every day
The essential sun
Proceeds, but only to accommodate
A tenant moon,
And he remains until the very break
Of morning, absentee landlord of the dark