To celebrate National Poetry Month, we’ve gathered together poems and stories that offer a broad look at poetry across different styles and traditions. You’ll find sonnets and sestinas alongside spoken word and more experimental work. Together, these stories show how poetry connects to politics, culture, and everyday life.
We hope you’ll find the stories below, and the scholarship they include in full, a useful resource for classroom or leisure reading. As always, these pieces draw on peer-reviewed research on JSTOR, with free access to the linked articles for all readers.
Poems to Read Right Now
Poems by 10 Contemporary Black Poets
February 18, 2021
Poems by Black poets, including Morgan Parker, Hanif Abdurraqib, Simone White, Terrance Hayes, and more.
12 Poems by Asian American and Pacific Islander Poets
May 3, 2023
Poems by Asian American and Pacific Islander poets, including Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Marilyn Chin, Atsuro Riley, Kazim Ali and more.
10 Poems by African-American Poets
February 2, 2018
Poems by African-American poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Kwame Dawes, Rita Dove, Langston Hughes, Tyehimba Jess, Kevin Young, and more.
Ten Poems By Sylvia Plath
October 27, 2016
Sylvia Plath was born on October 27, 1932, and became in her short life one of the most influential poets of the era.
10 Poems by Lucie Brock-Broido
March 7, 2018
Ten poems by the accomplished poet and teacher Lucie Brock-Broido.
Ten Poems by Audre Lorde
June 13, 2021
The esteemed poet is author of Sister Outsider, one title on the Schomburg Black Liberation Reading List. Read free related content on JSTOR.
10 Poems for National Hispanic Heritage Month
October 1, 2021
One of the most meaningful ways to celebrate the month between September 15 and October 15 may be to lend our attention to verse.
12 Poems by Frank O’Hara
March 28, 2025
Plus his manifesto on Personism and writings about O’Hara by Ted Berrigan, Joseph LeSueur, and Joe Brainard.
14 Poems from Little Magazines
April 18, 2023
Poems by Alice Notley, Fred Moten, C. D. Wright, Jean Valentine, Michael Burkard, and more.
Summertime Poems and Paintings
July 27, 2018
Summery poems by Mary Oliver, Matthew Zapruder, and other poets, along with seasonal paintings by Claude Monet and other artists.
Weekly Newsletter
Forms, Constraints, and Experiments
Sonnets by 11 Contemporary Poets
April 12, 2021
The name of this fourteen-line poetic form comes from the Italian sonetto, meaning "a little sound or song."
10 Sestinas by Modern and Contemporary Poets
March 14, 2025
The sestina form features the repetition of end words across stanzas. Here are sestinas by Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Bishop, Patricia Smith, and more.
10 Villanelles by Modern and Contemporary Poets
August 19, 2025
Read these recursive, nineteen-line poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Paisley Rekdal, William Logan, Agha Shahid Ali, and more.
10 Ekphrastic Poems
April 5, 2019
Broadly defined, an ekphrastic poem describes another work of art. Here are some by Ocean Vuong, Aziza Barnes, Robert Hayden, Frank O’Hara, Danez Smith, and more.
10 Contemporary Pastoral Poems
September 22, 2025
Poems that reflect and reinterpret the pastoral tradition, by Louise Glück, Alex Dimitrov, Rebecca Lehmann, Sam Sax, Natasha Trethewey, and more.
10 Contemporary Elegies
April 5, 2021
In these poems of lament, the speaker expresses grief and sorrow.
The Heretical Origins of the Sonnet
April 21, 2021
The lyrical poetic form’s origins can be traced back earlier than Petrarch.
There Once Was a Poem Called a Limerick
April 12, 2021
Whose history, they say, isn't quick. It's all such a muddle, it can leave you befuddled, whether you like the clean or the sick.
Everyday Life, Revisited—with Bernadette Mayer’s Memory
April 15, 2020
In the poet’s work, the small and ordinary rise to the level of heroic adventures. If we value human life, then we should value what makes up a life.
A Belief in Ghosts: Poetry and the Shared Imagination
October 4, 2016
An essay from poet Dorothea Lasky on poetry, ghosts, and the shared imagination.
Poets and Their Lives
The Poet Who Wanted to Be Eaten by Vultures
July 10, 2018
One day in 1971, the hard-drinking Beat poet Lew Welch walked into the woods of Nevada County and disappeared, possibly angling to be eaten by vultures.
The Privileged and Impoverished Life of Phillis Wheatley
March 30, 2018
The first African American to publish a book of poetry has remained a controversial figure in the Black community.
José Garcia Villa, an American Poet Ahead of His Time
March 4, 2024
While Villa’s otherness created an opening for his work in the US, American critics ultimately held both his modernism and his nationality against him.
Remembering H.D.
July 5, 2023
Hilda Doolittle, aka H.D., had her champions among modern scholars, but she's still often left off modern poetry course syllabi.
The Incredible Versatility of Adrienne Rich
September 16, 2023
Rich challenged the language of the past in poetry and prose while not quite embracing a fully inclusive future.
Remembering Her Memories: Lucille Clifton’s Generations in Our Time
February 1, 2023
The poet stares history down in an artful, Whitman-infused exploration of traumas her family endured and survived.
The Poetry Contest Edna St. Vincent Millay Lost
October 20, 2022
Though her writing career opened in an inauspicious manner, Edna St. Vincent Millay became the first woman to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
MacArthur Genius Fellow Maggie Nelson Writes Poetry, Too. Here’s Some Of It.
September 22, 2016
She can pack a room with her prose, but Maggie Nelson's got a poet's ear.
Taylor Swift: 1989’s Confessional Poet
September 23, 2015
Since she first came to prominence, Taylor Swift's songs have been read autobiographically.
Poetry and Power
The Poem That Inspired Radical Black Women to Organize
November 5, 2020
Beah Richards is best known as an actor, but in 1951 she wrote a sweeping poem that influenced the Civil Rights Movement.
Poetry’s Vital Role in Politics
December 10, 2025
Like Walt Whitman before them, Joy Harjo and Amanda Gorman are reimagining what it means to be a poet in this democratic republic.
Writing Poetry in Prison as an Act of Resistance
January 25, 2022
A writer recounts her uncle's experiences writing poetry in prison and advocating for Indigenous rights. His death and his typewriter are intertwined.
What Veterans’ Poems Can Teach Us About Healing on Memorial Day
May 22, 2025
A scholar and military veteran proposes that poems written by veterans that focus on honoring those who have died in service can help heal an ailing nation.
The Drag Aesthetic of Langston Hughes
July 6, 2016
Langston Hughes' poetry was influenced by the drag scene in 1920s Harlem.
Walt Whitman the… Politician?
May 31, 2016
Before Walt Whitman was a famous poet, he was a scandalous poet, but before even all that he was in the thick of local and national politics.
I Hear America Singing
April 17, 2024
Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.
Robert Hayden’s Relatable Fatigue
April 22, 2020
There’s a constant attention to the burdens of history in Robert Hayden’s poems. Even amid the beauties of life, the ghosts of the past linger.
Traditions, Movements, and Literary Worlds
The New York School Poets
May 5, 2022
From Bernadette Mayer to Joan Mitchell. Tracing the path from the New York School poets to their painter friends.
Adventures in Poetry
April 20, 2022
Published in the East Village from 1968 to 1975, Adventures in Poetry features poems by New York School poets Anne Waldman, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Allen Ginsberg, Bernadette Mayer, and more.
The Legacy and Power of Performance Poetry: A Reading List
January 29, 2025
MTV might take credit for getting spoken word on the pop cultural radar, but it’s a tradition that spans millennia and continents.
A “Genre-Bending” Poetic Journey through Modern Korean History
May 25, 2024
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée is an experiment in both lyric and epic modernism that uses form to invoke the tragedy of the wartime partition of Korea.
Wang Wei, Poet of Buddhist Emptiness
October 17, 2021
Focusing almost exclusively on nature, the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Wei expressed the philosophy of the Chan school.
Yeats and the Occult Imagination
December 24, 2025
Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.
Poetry Across Time
How Do We Know That Epic Poems Were Recited from Memory?
February 28, 2020
Scholars once doubted that pre-literate peoples could ever have composed and recited poems as long as the Odyssey. Milman Parry changed that.
Shakespeare’s First Published Work
March 17, 2024
Celebrated for his plays, Shakespeare actually opened his writing career with a derivative poem.
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mechanical Imagination
March 3, 2026
Behind The Raven’s melancholy lies a theory of composition shaped by magazines, machines, and modernity.
T. S. Eliot and the Holy Grail
June 1, 2022
The Nobel Laureate drew on a centuries-old legend when he put the Fisher King in The Waste Land.
What This 19th-Century Poet Knew About the Future
May 4, 2018
The Anthropocene requires a new history to explain how humans transform the planet. The work of poet John Clare is a good place to start.
The Restoration’s Filthiest Poet (and Why We Need Him)
April 11, 2018
Creature of the court, royalist and fop, dandy and dilettante, John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, knew how to scandalize with verse.
“Mad Meg,” the Poet-Duchess of 17th Century England
March 10, 2019
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, shocked the establishment by publishing poems and plays under her own name.
Mary Sidney and the Voice of God
August 24, 2022
Philip Sidney’s attempt at translating the Psalms ended with his early death. Then, his sister took up the cause—and proved herself the superior poet.
“Tell Me about a Complicated Man”: A Homer Reading List
October 2, 2023
The amount of scholarship on Homer and his works can be daunting. We've created this introductory reading list to help guide your explorations.
The Devonshire Manuscript
November 18, 2022
The sixteenth-century handwritten collection of poetry and commentary offers a glimpse of intellectual life at the court of King Henry VIII.
A Garden of Verses
April 3, 2024
As commonplace books evolved into anthologies, they developed reputations as canonical works, their editors curating tomes as vibrant as the loveliest bouquets.
Make Your Own Poetry Anthology
April 3, 2024
Teaching students to make their own poetry anthologies in the form of a commonplace book gives them insight into the power, and problems, of curation.
