From left to right: Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Emily Dickinson, and Beah Richards

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Our best stories about poetry and poems offer free links to poems from contemporary and classic American poets.
A portrait of Emily Dickinson in front of an evolutionary illustration

How Emily Dickinson Wrestled with Darwinism

The current vogue for the Amherst poet needs to give credit to the way she readily examined her childhood ideas about fixed and immutable truth.
Emily Dickinson, circa 1847

17 Poems by Emily Dickinson

A selection of her poems by one of America's greatest poets.
Emily Dickinson

Marketing Emily Dickinson as a Children’s Poet

Some of Emily Dickinson's poems were first published in children's magazines, in what one scholar calls a "marketing ploy gone awry."
Urania painting

Before the Civil War, Women Were Welcomed into the Sciences

Women in the STEM fields are reclaiming the memory of a richer scientific past than some might think.
Ghostly road

A Belief in Ghosts: Poetry and the Shared Imagination

An essay from poet Dorothea Lasky on poetry, ghosts, and the shared imagination.
Ice covering fuchsia flowers

The Snow That Never Drifts: Emily Dickinson’s Slant Winter

Like many of her poems, Emily Dickinson's "The Snow That Never Drifts" presents a riddle for the reader