Where to Find Poems to Analyze

There is a substantial collection of excellent poetry you can peruse at www.poetryoutloud.org – as of 2020, they have added a “Collections” feature that helps you discover a poem by topic, and they’ve also added searching by keyword.

Poetry Magazine also has an extensive list of poems, and even more options for the collections. Go to www.poetryfoundation.org to check it out!

Many of these poems are pretty famous, we strongly discourage you from looking up some website’s interpretation of your poem. That’s plagiarism, as it consists of you writing someone else’s interpretation of what really matters in your poem. Remember, what matters is that you come up with your own interpretation of what the poem is all about. We’d rather read an analysis that misses some important points, or that gets it wrong occasionally, than one that comes from some online “expert” opinion, that may not even be all that good to begin with.

Finally, be cautious of blog poems that have not really been vetted by any panel of judges or editors. A lot of them… a LOT of them… are really not poems that stand up to close examination very well.

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