Poetry Criticism Resources
Analysis and explication of poetry can be found in both books and periodicals. Increasingly, they can also be found in many electronic resources. Here is a list of resources to help you find what others have had to say on the subject of individual poets and their work. It is important to remember that commentary on poetry is, for the most part, limited to a relatively small number of important or well-known poems by major poets. Recently published poems generally will not have passed the test of time and will probably have had very little (or nothing at all) written about them. For assistance locating or using any of these resources, or if you need further help with literary research, contact Mike Russo.
37 Bookmarks Found with These Tags:
Poetry [X]
Literature [X]
Abstracts of English Studies (1958-1991)
Middleton Main Stacks: PE 25 A16 Library has: vols. 1-34 (1958-1991) This is a quarterly journal divided into four major categories: General, Britain, United States, and World Literature in English and Related languages. Each category is further divided into sections, and then into individual poets and authors. All abstract entries are brief and numbered. Each quarterly issue contains an index.
After confession : poetry as autobiography
Middleton Main Stacks: PS323 .5 .A36 2001 This collection of essays focuses primarily on modern American poetry. A number of poets and poems are discussed in the essays. The work is interesting but it does not include an index.
American and British Poetry: A Guide to the Criticism 1925-1978
Middleton Reference: Z1231 .P7 A44 1984 Scope: Indexes poems of 1,000 lines or less. Indexing: Alphabetical by name of poet.
American Poets from Puritans to the Present
Middleton Main Stacks: PS303 .W3 1984 Covers over 50 major poets. The twenty-two chapters in the work are divided into seven major parts and are basically in chronological order. Waggoner focuses primarily on major poets who are representative of the time in which they are writing. Primarily a work of criticism, the biographical information on poets is limited. The work contains a section of notes, a bibliography, an index, and an appendix that deals primarily with the topic of “Mysticism”.
An index to criticisms of British and American poetry
Middleton Main Stacks: Z 7156 A1 C63 The work is divided into two parts. Part one consists of entries listed alphabetically by poet and contains poems and critical citations. Part two consists of entries listed alphabetically by critic and contains sources of criticism. The work has a bibliography and an index to poem titles.
Arts and Humanities Citation Index
"Arts & Humanities Citation Index®, accessed via Web of Science, provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with quick, powerful access to the bibliographic and citation information they need to find research data, analyze trends, journals, and researchers, and share their findings. Overcome information overload and focus on essential data from over 1,395 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as selected items from over 6,000 scientific and social sciences journals, with coverage available to 1975." (from Thomson Reuters)
Black Poets of the United States: from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes
Middleton Main Stacks: PS153.N5 W313 This work focuses on Afro-American poetry published from about 1890 to 1940. The work consists of twelve chapters that include an introduction and a conclusion. Coverage is basically chronological. The main authors covered include: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Sterling Brown. Biographies are provided for each poet studied. The work includes a bibliographical appendix, a bibliographical supplement, and an index.
Middleton Reference: PR603 .C6 2001 This work contains a large number of contemporary poets, and is arranged alphabetically by poet. Each entry contains a biography, a complete list of separately published books, and a signed essay. The work contains a title index. It also provides information on lesser known contemporary poets.
This work contains a large number of contemporary poets, and is arranged alphabetically by poet. Each entry contains a biography, a complete list of separately published books, and a signed essay. The work contains a title index. It also provides information on lesser known contemporary poets. Access to the 6th and 7th editions is available through the Biography Resource Center database.
Critical survey of poetry : English language series
Middleton Reference: PR502 .C85 Primary entries are author entries. Each entry provides a biography, achievements, a list of works in other formats, criticism, and a bibliography. The first volume contains a list of contributors. Each volume contains a list of authors that it contains. There are twenty-two essays that provide an overview of the development and sub-genres of poetry. The essays and a cumulative index are contained in volume eight. Updates an earlier 8-volume edition (PN 1111 C7 Middleton Reference).
Critical survey of poetry : foreign language series
Middleton Reference: PN1111 .C7 1984 Primary entries are author entries. Each entry provides a biography, achievements, a list of works in other formats, criticism, and a bibliography. The first volume contains a list of contributors. Each of the first four volumes contains a list of authors. The fifth volume contains twenty-seven essays, each focusing on the literature of various countries. Volume five also contains a cumulative index.
Epic and Romance Criticism: a Checklist of Interpretations, 1940-1972
Middleton Main Stacks: Z7156 .E6 C64 Volume one focuses on English and American Epics and Metrical Romances and Volume two focuses on Classical and Continental Epics and Metrical Romances. Entries are arranged alphabetical by title of poem. Volume one includes an index that contains nine additional titles.
Essay and general literature index
Middleton Reference: AI3 .E752 Scope: Covers man subjects in the humanities, including literature, from 1900 to 2000. This series indexes books of essays, not periodicals.Indexing: Each year is indexed separately. Each volume consists of one alphabetical author-subject-title index.
Exploring Poetry presents the full text of over 200 of the most frequently studied poems in high school literature classes. It also furnishes an introduction to each poem, essays on its construction and critical interpretation, a line-by line-analysis of the poem, a set of three study questions, an encyclopedia of over 1500 literary terms, a timeline of over 1300 literary and historical events, and a biography with (in nearly every case) a portrait of the author. One hundred and twenty authors are represented in EXPLORING Poetry. More than an hour of audio and video recordings (49 audio and 12 video clips) is also featured. This resource is intended for upper-level high school students.
Guide to American poetry explication
Middleton Reference: Z1231 .P7 G85 1989 Volume 1—Colonial and Nineteenth Century Volume 2—Modern and Contemporary
Guide to British poetry explication
Middleton Reference: Z2014 .P7 M34 1991 Volume 1—Old English-Medieval Volume 2—Renaissance Volume 3—Restoration-Romantic Volume 4—Victorian-Contemporary
Middleton Reference: AI 3 H85 Library has: v.1 (1974/1975)-v.19 (1992/1993) This is a cumulative index to English language periodicals. Its scope includes language and literature. It is arranged alphabetically with author and subject entries. A separate listing of citations to book reviews is included. This index partly continues Social Sciences and Humanities Index (1965-1974), International Index (1955-1965), and International Index to Periodicals (1907-1955). All are fairly similar in arrangement and scope.
Invisible Poets: Afro-Americans of the Nineteenth Century
Middleton Main Stacks: PS153 .N5 S48 This work focuses on twenty-six lesser-known African American Poets who published poetry in America during the nineteenth century. As a result, Paul Lawrence Dunbar is not included. Biographical information is included for all authors. The work is divided into one chapter per poet. It also includes sections on: bibliographies of the poets' works, an index and seven appendices. The appendices provide some bibliographic information for the following topics: Poets for Further Research, Occasional Poets, Anonymous Poets and Ada, Turn-of-the-Century Poets, Poets Erroneously Identified as Afro-Americans, the Creole Poets of Les Cenelles, and Phyllis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon: Bibliographies.
Middleton Main Stacks: PR83 .M73 1966 This work covers many major British and American authors. This edition of the work is divided into four volumes: v.1. The beginnings to the seventeenth century.--v.2. Neo-classicism to the romantic period.--v.3. The romantic period to the Victorian Age.--v.4. The mid-nineteenth century to Edwardianism. Authors are covered in chronological order based on the dates of their deaths. Entries contain biographical information and criticism.
Middleton Main Stacks: Z6511 .W44 1984 The work is arranged alphabetically by author and title. Most entries are author entries. It focuses on American and English Literature.
Longman dictionary and handbook of poetry
Middleton Reference: PN1021 .M94 1985 This dictionary provides a critical vocabulary of poetic terms for the poet and the student of poetry. It contains definitions of traditional terms, contemporary workshop terms, terms borrowed from other arts and disciplines, and archaic or specialized jargon. The work has three appendices covering selected topics; rhetorical, poetical, and logical devices; and a selected topical bibliography.
MLA International Bibliography
Middleton Reference: Z7006 .M64 Author entries are contained within the Classified Listings section. This section is currently divided into five volumes: vol. one – British and Irish, Commonwealth, English Caribbean, and American Literatures; vol. two – European, Asian, African, and Latin American Literatures; vol. three – Linguistics; vol. four – General Literature and Related Topics; vol. 5 – Folklore. The entries are numbered according to volume. The work contains a documents author index and a subject index.
MLA International Bibliography
MLA International Bibliography is an index of journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association, the electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to 1926. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Listings on rhetoric and composition and the history, theory and practice of teaching language and literature are also included. In addition, the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the association's proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors to each record in the Bibliography are also included. Examples of titles offered in MLA International Bibliography include: Journal of International Folklore, Journal of English and German Philology, Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Language and Communication, Language Teaching Research, Modern Language Journal, etc.
Palmer's Full Text Online 1785 - 1870
A combination electronic index and full-text database, in PDF form, of The Times of London. Coverage spans the years 1790 to 1905. Searching is by keyword. Available off campus. To find book reviews, include the word "reviews" in your search string along with either the book's title or author. For example: reviews and on the origin of species or reviews and charles darwin. (The search engine is not very discriminating and will produce a large amount of irrelevant results. Therefore, you should limit your date range as much as possible and leave the sorting option set to "relevance".)
Middleton Reference: PN1010 .P54 This is a three-volume work. Each volume focuses on 10-13 major poets. The poets are from all times and nationalities. Poets are arranged alphabetically in each individual volume. Each author entry contains poetry criticism, and is supplemented by biographical and bibliographical material.
Middleton Reference: Z2014 .P7 K8 1980 Scope: Covers the years 1925 to 1977, but is limited to poems of less than 500 lines. Indexing: Indexed alphabetically by poet.
Project Muse provides online, world wide, institutional subscription access to the full text of over 100 scholarly journals in the arts and humanities, social sciences and mathematics.
The Columbia history of American poetry
Middleton Main Stacks: PS 303 C64 1993 This work contains essays focusing on a variety of American poets. It tends to focus on the relationship between American poetry and American culture.
The Columbia History of American Poetry
Available through Netlibrary. This work contains essays focusing on a variety of American poets. It tends to focus on the relationship between American poetry and American culture.
The continuity of American poetry
Middleton Main Stacks: PS303 .P4 This work originated from Pearce's 1954 lectures on the history of American poetry at the Sulzburg Seminar in American Studies. Its ten chapters cover American poetry roughly from the seventeenth century to the 1950's. The work has an index, which is the best way to find criticism on individual authors.
The English romantic poets : a review of research and criticism
Middleton Main Stacks: PR590 .E5 1985 This collection focuses on Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth. The book is divided into chapters, and does include an examination of the Romantic Movement. The work includes an index.
The New Cambridge bibliography of English literature
Middleton Reference: Z2011 .N45 Each volume in this work is divided into chapters and sections with some sections focusing on poetry and poets. Entries are alphabetical by author for each section. Each page has two numbered columns. Volumes 1-4 each have an index, with entries referring to column numbers. Volume 5 is a cumulative index for the work. Volumes are basically chronological in scope: volume one – 600-1600; volume two – 1660-1800; volume three – 1800-1900; volume four – 1900-1950.
The New Moulton's library of literary criticism
Middleton Reference: PR85 .N39 1985 This work is similar in arrangement and scope to Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors through the Beginning of the 20th Century. It is comprised of ten volumes instead of four, so each volume deals with smaller periods of time. Authors are arranged basically by date of death. The eleventh volume is a cumulative index that contains an index to bibliographies, series contents, an index to authors, and an index to critics.
The New Princeton encyclopedia of poetry and poetics
Middleton Reference: PN1021 .N39 1993 This book is a comprehensive reference source for scholars, students, poets, and general readers. It deals with knowledge, facts, theories, questions, and informed judgment, concerning poetry. It contains descriptions of poetic forms and genres, surveys of 106 national poetries, overviews all major schools of poetry, accounts of major movements, issues in criticism and literary theory, and the relationship of poetry to other disciplines. This is the 3rd edition of the work and has added increased coverage of emergent and non-Western poetries; coverage of all movements in recent criticism and literary theory that bear on poetry; more extensive bibliographies; extensive cross-referencing. Entries are arranged alphabetically.
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Middleton Reference: PN1021 .N39 1994 This book is a comprehensive reference source for scholars, students, poets, and general readers. It deals with knowledge, facts, theories, questions, and informed judgment, concerning poetry. It contains descriptions of poetic forms and genres, surveys of 106 national poetries, overviews all major schools of poetry, accounts of major movements, issues in criticism and literary theory, and the relationship of poetry to other disciplines. This is the 3rd edition of the work and has added increased coverage of emergent and non-Western poetries; coverage of all movements in recent criticism and literary theory that bear on poetry; more extensive bibliographies; extensive cross-referencing. Entries are arranged alphabetically.
The Shorter New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature
Middleton Stacks: Z2011 .S417 1981 Update of The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature
The sonnet in England and America : a bibliography of criticism
Middleton Main Stacks: Z2014 .S6 D66 This work is divided into four chapters. Chapter one contains general works. Chapter two focuses on the renaissance. Chapter three is devoted entirely to Shakespeare. Chapter four covers eighteenth and nineteenth century literature. Poets are listed alphabetically in each chapter. All entries are numbered. The work contains a poet index, a contributor index, and a subject index.
