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William Faulkner — one of the great American novelists — thought of himself as a failed poet. Which made our critic Juan Vidal wonder: What is it about poetry that makes us hold it above other arts?

Katie Roiphe's The Violet Hour is a meditation on mortality in which she describes the last days of Maurice Sendak, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, John Updike, James Salter and Dylan Thomas.

Young writers who are Roma, Europe's largest ethnic minority, see their own struggles in Amanda Gorman's poetry, and are translating her new book into Hungarian.

Jim Jarmusch's new film, Paterson, was loosely inspired by William Carlos Williams' epic poem of the same name. Critic David Edelstein says the film expertly evokes the inner state of an artist.

It's a thoroughly modern problem: crafting a password that's both secure and memorable. But two computational linguists see a very old answer — one written in iambic pentameter and end rhyme.

Poet JOHN BALABAN has translated the poetry of an 18th century Vietnamese concubine in the new book, –Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuang Huong— (Copper Canyon Press) Ho Xuang Huong won acclaim for her poetry despite the fact that she was a woman and she challenged established conventions. Most of her poems also were double entendres: a hidden sexual meaning lay behind her words. BALABAN was a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war, and went back to the country after the war to collect and preserve Vietnamese folk poetry. BALABAN is also the author of a memoir, and of several books of his own poetry.

The Lawrence, Kan., police department's account has over 100,000 Twitter followers. It's well-known for tweets that use humor to reach its community.

Is there a poem that's stuck with you over the years? Tell NPR what it means to you.

"Look at all the wisdom, look at all the heart that is imprisoned in our society," says Hank Willis Thomas, cofounder of the art installation project.

Also: Mary Gaitskill turns an essay about Celine Dion into a reflection on authenticity and vulnerability; gay Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina is on Time's list of most influential people.