LibGuides: Poetry: Finding Articles About Poetry or Poems

Finding Articles

Q: I have a poem. How can I find scholarly articles about it?

A: Response, analysis, and interpretation of literature, such as poems, fall under a category called Literary Criticism. Library article databases provide resources on criticism of poetry.

You can begin by searching for your poem's title, author, or both in our OneSearch bar, and clicking on the "Articles" section of the dropdown menu.

OneSearch

OneSearch This link opens in a new window
Search most of the library databases, eBooks, physical collection, and open access resources all in one place. OneSearch provides simple, one-stop searching for books, videos, articles, digital media, and more.

Gale Literature and Poetry Databases

Gale Literature: Book Review Index This link opens in a new window
Gale Literature: Book Review Index includes nearly 6 million book reviews, allowing users to conduct research in numerous disciplines, including literature, history, education, psychology, and more. This unique product provides quick access to reviews of books, periodicals, books on tape and electronic media representing a wide range of popular, academic and professional interests.
LitFinder (Gale) This link opens in a new window
Gale Literature: LitFinder provides access to literary works and authors throughout history and includes more than 130,000 full-text poems and 650,000+ poetry citations, as well as short stories, speeches, and plays. The database also includes secondary materials like biographies, images, and more.
Literature Resource Center This link opens in a new window
Find up-to-date biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on nearly 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world The optional MLA International Bibliography module adds citations for hundreds of thousands of books, articles and dissertations from 1926 to the present, linked to full text where available.

Poetry Databases and Journals Through JSTOR

The American Poetry Review
The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. APR also aims to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide authors, especially poets, with a far-reaching forum in which to present their work.

Coverage: 1972-2017
KulturPoetik
The editors attach great importance to two points: (1) Cultural poetics shall remain a field of literary studies and must neither forsake its special point of view (and its identity as a discipline) nor neglect the characteristic input that literature adds to overall culture and its own individual dynamics. Occasionally, KulturPoetik will publish articles on general cultural matters, yet, in its core, it will remain a journal for literary studies. (2) All contributions should be written in a way that appeals not only to scholars, but also to interested laypersons.

Coverage: 2001-2019
Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics
The first issue of Paideuma: A Journal Devoted to Ezra Pound Scholarship was published in 1972. In 2002, Paideuma broadened its focus, and the journal is now subtitled "Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics." Paideuma is published annually.

Coverage: 1972-2017
Poetry
Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world. Monroe's "Open Door" policy, set forth in Volume I of the magazine, remains the most succinct statement of Poetry's mission: to print the best poetry written today, regardless of style, genre, or approach.

Coverage: 1912-2017
Victorian Poetry
Victorian Poetry examines the poetry of the Victorian Period (1830-1914) from a broad range of theoretical/critical angles, including but not confined to new historicism, feminism, and social/cultural issues, and focuses on poets of all classes and genders in Britain and the Commonwealth.

Coverage: 1963-2015

JSTOR

JSTOR This link opens in a new window
JSTOR includes over one thousand high-quality academic journals across the sciences, humanities, social sciences, arts and economics/business.

From PBS (Freely Available to Anyone)

A search of the PBS website for "Poetry" returns thousands of results. I've included just a few below.

Poetry in America
In the second season of Poetry in America, guests join Elisa New for a lively and immersive discussion of the poems of Marilyn Chin, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Mark Doty, Yusef Komunyakaa, Stephen Sondheim, William Carlos Williams, and Walt Whitman.
Poetry Out Loud: Nevada
At the annual Nevada State Poetry Out Loud Finals, Nevada high school students compete to determine the state champion, who will go on to compete in the National Finals.
Poetry Out Loud: Mississippi
Mississippi's 2016 Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest. High school students from across the state compete for a chance to represent Mississippi in the National Recitation Contest in Washington, D.C.

Criticism: A Sample of Articles About Poems or Poetry

#poetryisnotdead: Understanding Instagram Poetry within a Transliteracies Framework
Katie Kovalik and Jen Scott Curwood
Literacy (Oxford, England), 2019-11, Vol.53 (4), p.185-195
"Young people are composing multimodal creative works, including digital poetry, to share with an online audience, using platforms such as Instagram. Drawing on transliteracies theory, this case study found that three main themes appeared regarding the nature of literacy practices on Instagram."
The “Annabel Lee” Blues: Re-Reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Rhythm and Rhyme Scheme (Database Link)
Jacky W. Dumas
The Comparatist, 2019-10-01, Vol.43 (1), p.313-323
"In 'Traces in 'Annabel Lee' of Allan Cunningham's Poem' (1986), Burton Pollin asserts that Edgar Allan Poe used 'the very popular ballad 'Lily of Nithsdale' (134) as inspiration for his own 'Annabel Lee' (1849)."
Sin/tax: Grammar, Hybridity and Resistance in Contemporary Black Poetry
Dai George
Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, 2020-04-02, Vol.1 (1)
"This essay interrogates the various imperatives towards syntactical fragmentation and ‘radical unintelligibility’ that are prevalent among the avant-garde poetic community, arguing that they are insufficient to the adaptive stylistic needs of many contemporary poets of colour. Building upon classic postcolonial theory, it posits that a dialectic of grammatical ‘abrogation and appropriation’ more fruitfully captures the hybrid style of many poets working at the interface with prose and lyric essay, often for radical political ends."
more...less...
See full article, below:
Engagement, Again: American Poetry Then and Now
Jeffrey Gray
The American Poetry Review (Vol. 49, Issue 5), September-October 2020
"By and large, political poetry--poetry responding to national or global events, poetry of 'engagement' or even 'witness'--was not the norm in the United States through the 20th century. When it was written and when it was read, critical reception was hostile."