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"The Unbearable Weight of Staying" is a poem written by Warsan Shire, an acclaimed poet and social activist. This poem appears in her book Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, which was published during 2011 by Flipped Eye. In pages saturated...

Warsan Shire is a young (born in 1988) London-based Kenyan-born female writer from Somali whose strength as a poet lies in her straightforwardness. Most of her poems, like the one is question, “Difficult Names”, are in prose, which defies the...

The Dream Songs, by John Berryman, is a book of poems about a man named Henry. Berryman was an American poet who was born in 1914 and died in 1972. It was first published in 1969. The book of poetry revolves around the life of the main character,...

A Warning to Children is a poem written by Robert Graves that foretells what it will be like to know the world in the future. Robert Graves was an English artist, a poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist. Because of his father’s...

The White Goddess is an essay written by the English poet Robert Graves. The essay was published in the year 1948 and was the result of different essays written by Robert Graves and published in the literary journal Wales.

In The White Goddess, ...

"Love Without Hope" was written by Robert Graves, an English poet living mostly in the 20th century. He has published numerous works. Born into a middle class family, Graves was also a soldier, who enlisted almost instantly into the First of the...

In 1944, the poet named Hilda Doolittle who is better known simply by her initials H.D. announced with a vengeance her return to poetry after a turn toward fiction and film starting in the early 1930’s. That period was also marked by seeking help...

Along with Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, modernist poet H.D. acted as a central figure in the burgeoning Imagist poetry movement. The writers were inspired by Japanese Haikus and ancient Greek verse, and sought to increase the...

Stones of Venice is a three-volume overview of Venetian architecture published by John Ruskin between 1851 and 1853. Ruskin later wrote that his intention was to reveal the relationship between the artistic temperament of the ancient city and its...

Christina Rossetti wrote “Amor Mundis” as a companion poem to “Up-Hill”, and they together form an excellent example of what critics call the ‘dialogic poetry’ – a particular genre that makes use of dialogues or conversations between two people....

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born to a Italian family in London, England in 1828. Coming from a successful family, his brother William Michael Rossetti and sisters Christina Rossetti and Maria Francesca Rossetti all became famous writers. Rossetti...

"Sudden Light" is a poem written by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 1850s but published over a decade later in Poems: An Offering to Lancashire in the 1863 volume. Dante Gabriel Rossetti was not only a British poet, but also a painter and artist who...

Herman Melville is best known for his famous works Moby Dick and Billy Budd, but he also made serious contributions to the poetic canon of the 19th century. He was a part of the American Renaissance, an age of renewed passion for art and the...

“The Berg” is a poem appearing in Herman Melville’s collection John Marr, and Other Sailors; With Some Sea-Pieces. Melville published his volume at his own expense in 1888. By that point in his life, Melville was three years in retirement from his...

Having given up his dream of making a living as novelist, by 1888 Herman Melville was working as customs inspector and writing poetry for himself and friends. That year put together a collection of verse titled John Marr and Other Sailors and paid...

Omar Khayyam was a Persian astronomer and part-time poet whose career spanned the tenth and eleventh centuries. His poetic output of 280 quatrains went essentially unknown to western readers until a copy happened to, according to the most popular...

The ancient myth of Hero and Leander as retold by Christopher Marlowe especially captivated Lord Byron with its tale of Leander swimming across the Hellespont (today known as the Dardanelles) to reach his beloved Hero. So captivated was Byron that...

"Stanzas" is a poem written by Lord Byron in 1820. Lord Byron, a familiar name all around the world, is one of the greatest British poets, as well as a politician and a leader in the Romantic movement during the early 1800s. His life was extremely...

Coleridge's masterpiece, "The Aeolian Harp," written in 1795 and published in 1796, stands out as an early example of the conversation poem genre. Initially focused on his upcoming nuptials with Sara Fricker, the poem delves beyond mere...

The writing of "The Task", a six book blank verse poem, is considered one of the greatest achievements of William Cowper's life. The poem has its origins in a rather peculiar story. Cowper, a man of strong religious background and fervent personal...

On July 26, 1680, John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester and noted man of letter, passed away. In response, Aphra Behn—at the time a successful if controversial playwright still years away from publishing poetry or the work for which she is most...

Richard Lovelace was an English poet and playwright during the Renaissance period and a notable figure involved with the Royal military and petitions regarding the Church of England which led to his imprisonment.

The Grasshopper is a poem Richard...

Thomas Carew was a poet raised in the church tradition in London during the late 16th century. After his father's illness, he spent some time in Italy where he worked as an ambassador. Some scandals occurred during this season which prevented him...

“A Rapture” is without question the most well-known and closely studied poem by Cavalier Poet Thomas Carew (1595-1640). Carew earned a degree from Merton College, studied law, enjoyed several diplomatic positions, fought in the First Bishop’s War...