Vox Populi: The Most Popular posts of 2025

Since mainland China blocks virtually all western media, I was surprised a few months ago (following the appearance in New World Poetry of seven of my poems translated into Mandarin by Professor Ma Yongbo) when a flood of visitors from China began clicking onto my poems and essays in Vox Populi. Thankfully, interest spread to better poets such as Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Donna Hilbert and Ma Yongbo himself, as well as many others. Here’s a chart showing the growth in Vox Populi’s readership in 2025:

Monthly visits averaged around 25,000 until September when they grew to 42,000; then October 52,000; November 201,000; and December 256,000.

Notice that most of the traffic in 2025 originated in China:

~

Of the top ten cities, eight of them are located in China:

~

Vox Populi publishes approximately 740 new posts each year. Here are the ten most popular that were published in 2025; notice all ten are poems:

Laure-Anne Bosselaar: In Response to a Student Asking Where to Find Poetry During Difficult Times

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Letter to the Others in the Dark

Michael Simms: Ecstasy & Envy

Ma Yongbo: Three poems translated from Chinese

Donna Hilbert: Ode to Purple

Alison Luterman: What I Learned

Barbara Hamby: Trigger Tries To Explain

Kurt Brown: High Diver

David Kirby: Two Poems

Betsy Sholl: Monet’s Garden 

~~~~

It pleases me that large numbers of visitors from China are reading contemporary American poetry, but let’s don’t forget that approximately half of VP‘s posts are prose, including political articles, personal essays, fiction, humor, satire and critical reviews. Here are the ten most visited prose posts that appeared in the last year:

Michael W. Smith: The Sacrifices Made By The Signers of the Declaration

Mike Schneider: Stirring Up the “Great Folk Scare”

Michael T. Young: The Need to Believe | The Poetry of Lisel Mueller

Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear

Alfred Corn: Unforeseen Tragic Scenario 

James Crews: Beech Trees in Spring

Video: The commencement address that Harvard suppressed for mentioning genocide (with text)

Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across

Baron Wormser: What Nurtures Us, What Diminishes Us

Alexis Rhone Fancher: Out of Order

~~~~

Congratulations to all the poets and writers who published their work in Vox Populi in 2025!

Also, a big thank you to the devoted readers who support our community by commenting on our posts and sharing them on social media. Although there are far too many participants to list here, their comments are often perfect gems, for example these two comments responding to The Boy and the Mockingbird by Luray Gross:

 A wonderment of an avian/human bonding story. I once knew a crow who would say hello Joe to everyone he/she met; I once knew a starling who imitated neighborhood lawnmower engines from the eves outside my apartment. Thanks for mockingbird praise. Birds can save our selves, and (apparently) our stories. We need to save them. They have trouble saying help us/ help me. (Jim Newsome)

~

Luray: I love this story poem. I am prepared for it first by the encounters I’ve had often from afar with the mockingbirds all over our ranch—sometimes off in the distance trying on every tune they can imagine. Have you ever passed off in whistling, a melody or call to one in full raucous and had her use it in her banter? And then Jarrell’s “The Mockingbird in “The Lost World,” where he says: A mockingbird can sound like anything/ He imitates the world he drove away/ so well that for a moment, in the moonlight/ Which one’s the mockingbird, which one’s the world? (Sean Sexton)

~~~~

On a more somber note, this year witnessed the passing of Baron Wormser, one of our most prolific contributors. His popular column brought clarity to the issues of our desperate era, often drawing lessons from American film and literature. We will miss Baron’s decency and intelligence.

And finally, I want to acknowledge Naomi Shihab Nye. Since the founding of VP in 2014, Naomi has inspired our community through her brilliant work as a poet and contributing editor.

~~~~

Copyright 2025 Michael Simms

Michael Simms is the founder and editor of Vox Populi.