ARCHIVE:
Classic Poems
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The Inventive Translations of Mary Sidney Herbert
How the Countess of Pembroke inspired John Donne.
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A Taste for Plainness
The simple perfection of the first American poet, Anne Bradstreet.
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"This Is the Favorite Poem"
Hear Mike Wallace read Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess.”
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Lucrezia Borgia’s Hair and Forgotten Names
Walter Savage Landor can write a memorable poem about almost anything.
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Surf and Turf
A 19th-century poem about a staring contest between a man and a fish.
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Crazy in Love
For Valentine’s Day, a poem Ezra Pound called “the most beautiful sonnet in the language.”
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Truth in Darkness
Herman Melville is a master of conveying nature as a mysterious language we must speak but do not know.
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The Mystery of Vachel Lindsay
How did the most visible poet in America—and a father of the Beats—become nearly forgotten?
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Going Somewhere
How poets like Walter Raleigh reported on the quick flickers and sudden changes in emotional life.
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In Praise of Memorizing Poetry—Badly
What we learn by misremembering our favorite lines.
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Lost in Court
How one of Ben Jonson's masterpieces found the world by leaving it behind.
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Damned Great
Why are William Cowper's poems so witty? Because he was convinced he was going to hell.
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Lullaby and Laughter
The strange appeal of George Gascoigne's self-inspecting humor.
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Street Poet
How the often-overlooked Lola Ridge became one of America's first great urban Modernists.
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