National Poetry Month 2023: Know Your Poets

Akbar, Kaveh

• A Boy Steps into the Water, 2017
• What Seems Like Joy, 2017

Ali, Agha Shahid

• The Wolf's Postscript to "Little Red Riding Hood", 1987

Angelou, Maya

• Still I Rise, 1978
• Phenomenal Woman, 1978

​Asghar, Fatimah

• Partition, 2018

Auden, W. H.

• The Unknown Citizen, 1940

Bass, Ellen

• Indigo, 2017

Brooks, Gwendolyn

• Sadie and Maud, 1945
• We Real Cool, 1959

Brown, Nathan (scroll down the page on his personal website for your poem)

• Just Now, 2017
• Young Soldier, 2017
• What Holds, 2018
• A Hymn of Praise, 2016
• Nevertheless, It Moves, 2015
• iLone Together, 2013
• Neruda's Garden, 2012
• Existential Solstice, 2011
• Little Jerusalems, 2010
• The Sign, 2013

Browning, Robert

• My Last Duchess, 1842

Choi, Franny

• Introduction to Quantum Theory
• Turing Test Boundaries, 2019 

Collins, Billy

• Introduction to Poetry, 1988

Davis, William Virgil

• Those Sunday Mornings, 2010

Dickinson, Emily

• Because I Could Not Stop for Death, 1863

Dove, Rita

• Teach Us to Number Our Days, 1989

Dunbar, Paul Lawrence

• We Wear the Mask, 1895

Eliot, T.S.

• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915

Erdrich, Louise

• Indian Boarding School: The Runaways, 2003

Evans, William

• Even Though I Love You More Than Anything, That Won't Stop Them From Killing You, 2017

Frost, Robert

• Mending Wall, 1914
• The Road Not Taken, 1916
• Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening, 1923

Gibson, Andrea

• The Madness Vase, AKA The Nutritionist, 2019 
• Tincture, 2018

Giovanni, Nikki

• Ego-Tripping (there may be a reason why), 1968

Goodwin, Idris

• Old Ladies and Dope Boys, 1977

Hayden, Robert

• Those Winter Sundays, 1962

Heaney, Seamus

• Digging, 1966

Hicok, Bob

• A History of Origami, 2009

Hughes, Langston

• Harlem, 1951
• Mother to Son, 1922
• The Negro Speaks of Rivers, 1920
• Theme for English B, 1951

Kaminsky, Ilya

• In a Time of Peace, 2019
• My Mother's Tango, 2004
• We Lived Happily During the War, 2013

Komunyakaa, Yusef

• Facing It, 2001

Lorde, Audre

• Power, 1978

Lovelace, Nabila

• After Chris Abani

Marvell, Andrew

• To His Coy Mistress, 1681

McKibbens, Rachel

• Remember the Boys, 2020

Mearns, Hughes

• Antigonish (I Met a Man Who Wasn't There), 1922

Mojgani, Anis

• Pancakes, 2013 

Nguyen, Hieu Minh

• Notes on Staying, 2016

Olivarez, José

• My Parents Fold Like Luggage, 2018

Ortiz Cofer, Judith

• Quinceañera, 1991

Owen, Wilfred

• Dulce et Decorum Est, 1917

Plath, Sylvia

• The Arrival of the Bee Box, 1965
• Daddy, 1960
• Lady Lazarus, 1960
• Metaphors, 1960
• Mirror, 1963

Poe, Edgar Allan

• The Raven, 1845

Pound, Ezra

• The Garden, 1913
• In a Station of the Metro, 1913
• Dogmatic Statement Concerning The Game of Chess: Theme for a Series of Pictures, 1915

Reza, Seema

• Help, 2015

Rich, Adrienne

• Living in Sin, 1975

Ríos, Alberto Alvaro

• Nani, 1982

Robinson, Edwin Arlington

• Richard Cory, 1897

Roethke, Theodore

• My Papa's Waltz, 1942
• The Waking, 1953

Sax, Sam

• The Boy Detective Gets Detected, 2015 (scroll down to page 40 of the PDF)
• Gay Boys and the Bridges Who Love Them, 2018
• Essay on Crying in Public, 2018 (Text)
  • Essay on Crying in Public, 2016 (Performance)
• Teeth, 2014

Sexton, Anne

• Cinderella, 1971

Shakespeare, William

• Sonnet 130: My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun

Shire, Warsan

• Home, 2015

Smith, Danez

• Dinosaurs in the Hood, 2014
• It Won't Be a Bullet, 2017

Thomas, Dylan

• Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, 1937

Whitman, Walt

• I Hear America Singing, 1860

Willis-Abdurraqib, Hanif

• When I Say that Loving Me is Kind of Like Being a Chicago Bulls Fan, 2016