Cultural Literacy: Reading - Poetry
 

 

Ciardi, John and Miller Williams   How Does a Poem Mean?  1975

 

Individual Poets and Poems

Any items without call numbers indicated can be found in literary anthologies. Please see the librarian if you need help locating anything. Most of the poems in the first chart can be found in

The Norton Anthology of Poetry 821.08 NOR 

Period, Nationality Poets and Significant Work
British, Renaissance Period
  • John Milton
  • John Dunne
British, Romantic Period
  • William Blake ("Songs of Innocence and Experience")
  • Robert Burns
  • William Wordsworth
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("The Rime of the Ancient Mariner")
  • George Gordon
  • Lord Byron
  • Percy Shelley
  • John Keats
British, Victorian Period
  • Alfred, Lord Tennyson ("Idylls of the King," and "Locksley Hall")
  • Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  • Matthew Arnold
British, Twentieth Century
  • Rupert Brooke
  • A.E. Housman
  • William Butler Yeats
  • T.S. Eliot ("The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock")
  • W. H. Auden
  • Dylan Thomas
American, The Romantic Period
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "The Courtship of Miles Standish") 
  • John Greenleaf Whittier 
  • Oliver Wendell Holmes
American, The National Period
  • Emily Dickinson
American, The Progressive Era
  • Edgar Lee Masters
  • Edward Arlington Robinson ("Miniver Cheevy," "Richard Cory")
  • Robert Frost ("The Road Not Taken," "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Mending Wall")
  • Carl Sandburg ("Chicago" and "Fog")
American Modernism
  • Ezra Pound 
  • H.D. (real name Hilda Doolittle)
  • Wallace Stevens 
  • William Carlos Williams ("The Red Wheelbarrow," "This Is Just To Say")
  • Marianne Moore
  • e.e. cummings
  • Langston Hughes
American, The Post-War Period
  • Theodore Roethke
  • Robert Lowell
  • Gwendolyn Brooks ("We Real Cool")
  • Richard Wilbur
  • James Dickey
  • Anne Sexton
  • Sylvia Plath ("Ariel")
French
  • Charles Baudelaire
  • Jacques Prevert
  • Arthur Rimbaud
  • Paul Verlaine
German
  • Heinrich Heine
  • Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Spanish
  • Federico Garcia Lorca
  • Robert Lowell
Latin American
  • Jose Marti
  • Pablo Neruda

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Epic or Longer Poems, Anthologies, and Collections by Individual Poets

 
Author Title Nationality Year Call Number
Anonymous  Beowulf   British about 700 AD 829.3 BEO 

In this adventurous Old English epic poem, Beowulf overcomes monsters and slays a fire-breathing dragon. The poem is based on Norse legends and historical events of the sixth century.

Anonymous  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight British  about 1350-1400  

This Arthurian epic tale is about the ordeals an ideal knight undergoes to prove his courage and his virtue. The two main episodes are Gawain’s beheading of the terrible Green Knight, and his efforts to resist the advances of a beautiful lady.

Chaucer, Geoffrey  The Canterbury Tales British about 1387-1400 821 CHA

In this poetic narrative, a colorful group of medieval travelers on their way to a religious shrine tell each other tales: some amusing, some serious, some off-color. Read "The Prologue" and at least a few of the key tales, such as "The Miller’s Tale" ( a story of a wife’s trickery against her husband, and his revenge against her lover); "The Wife of Bath’s Tale" (a knight learns what women really want); and "The Pardoner’s Tale" (three young men set out to destroy Death)

Dante  Inferno   Italian 1320  851 DAN

In this first book of The Divine Comedy, Dante’s journey through Hell reveals the medieval view of sin. As he travels though the different levels of the Underworld, he witnesses the punishments for various sins.

Gillan, M. and J., eds. Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry   1994  
Who -- or what -- is an American?
Ginsberg, Alan  Howl  American  1956  811 GIN 

Ginsberg was the premier Beat Poet, founding a new style based on his unique vision and challenge to accepted mores and morality. His work was widely censored throughout America.

Gordon, Ruth, ed. Pierced by a Ray of Sun: Poems About the Times We Feel Alone   1995  
Poems about loneliness and solitude by poets of world-wide note.
Homer  The Odyssey   Greek  9th Century BC 883 HOM 

The epic of Odysseus’ ordeals after the Trojan War as he tries for ten years to return home to Ithaca. On his journey he faces the dangers of the Cyclops, the Sirens, Circe, and others. Many other writers have used the character and journey of Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) in their works.

Milton, John  Paradise Lost  British  1667   

Considered the greatest epic in any modern language, this poem tells of Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden (Paradise), and the promise of their eventual salvation by the Son of God.

Poe, Edgar Allan  Great Tales and Poems   American  1840s  818 POE 

After you’ve read some of Poe’s stories, be sure to read the poems "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee."

Randall, Dudley, ed.  Black Poets  American  1971   

An anthology encompassing the range of African American poets from singers of slave songs to Nikki Giovanni.

Rexroth, Kenneth, ed.  One Hundred Poems from the Japanese  Japanese  1955   

A sampler of sensitively translated poems that preserve the beauty and spirit of the original.

Shakespeare, William  The Sonnets of William Shakespeare British  1609  822.33 J 

Shakespeare considered plays his work and sonnets his art. Read XVIII ("Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?"); XXIX (When, in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes"); CXVI ("Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment"); and CXXX ("My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun")

Virgil  The Aeneid   Italian (Latin)  18 BC  873 VIR 

This epic poem recounts the troubled journey of Aeneas as he leads the survivors of Troy to Italy, where they become the founders of Rome.

Whitman, Walt  Leaves of Grass   American  1855  811 WHI 

In his use of free verse and his emphasis on the importance of the individual, Whitman was a forerunner of modern poetry.

See also "Song of Myself"

Yevtushenko, Yevgeny  Poetry of ... Russian  1981  891.72 YEV 

Yevtushenko’s poetry is presented in Russian and in English.

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updated 07/29/03