“[S]omething awful is happening to a civilization when it ceases to produce poets and what is more crucial – when it ceases in any way whatever to believe in the report that only poets can make.”
James Baldwin, “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity”
Use these searchable sites to find just about any kind of poetry you’re looking for.
poets.org
poetryfoundation.org
poetryarchive.org
Poems and Lessons By Theme
To explore lesson plans on poetry organized by theme, try the collection from the Academy of American Poets. Themes include COVID, history, Black poets, family, social justice, Native American Heritage month, and much, much more!
Explore what’s out there in terms of extensive poetry collections.
CommonLit Library’s Poetry Collection
Or check out this set of curated collections that teach beautifully.
CURRENT VOICES
MOST ANTHOLOGIZED
VISUAL, CONCRETE, & BLACKOUT POETRY
EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
GREAT PAIRINGS
THE SONNET
Have a suggestion? Want to see your favorite author or text included? Share your suggestions by emailing cunyopenlit@gmail.com!
CURRENT VOICES
These poets are living and writing in our current moment.
Ada Limon (Current US Poet Laureate), “Howto Triumph Like a Girl”
Amanda Gorman (Inaugural poet, 2021), “The Hill We Climb”
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza,“The Moon Is Trans”
Madhur Anand (21st century eco-poet), “You Are Not Going to Come to Trillium”
Canisia Lubrin (PEN World Voices Festival headliner), “Monody”
Marjana Savka (Ukranian resistance poet), Five Poems
Meg Day, “Batter My Heart, Transgender’d God”
Victoria Chang (from The Trees Witness Everything, 2022) Six Poems
Xochiquetzal Candelaria, “A Question”
Kalki Koechlin, “The Printing Machine” (watch the poet perform a reading of the work here!)
MOST ANTHOLOGIZED
Single Poems
Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
Gloria Anzaldua, “To Live In The Borderlands”
E. E. Cummings, “[Buffalo Bill’s]”
Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death-” (479)
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Raven”
Alfred Lord Tennyson, “In Memoriam”
Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
William Carlos Williams, “This Is Just To Say”
William Blake, “The Tyger”
Want to offer your students access to some of the most popular poets of the 20th and 21st centuries? Here are some highlights, along with popular OER poetry anthologies.
Li Young Lee, Biography and Poems from the Poetry Foundation
Gwendolyn Brooks, Biography and Poems from the Poetry Foundation
June Jordan, Biography and Poems from the Poetry Foundation
GREAT TEACHING COLLECTIONS
Popular Poems to Teach from poetry.org
“Ten Poems I Love to Teach” by Eric Selinger
OER POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
CommonLit Poetry Collection
VISUAL, BLACKOUT, AND CONCRETE POETRY
Visual and concrete poetry teach really well, and they provide a model for students to experiment with poetic form, too.
EXPERIMENTAL WORKS
3D Poetry for You
This site offers images of 3D poetry in braille as well as other textual wordform art.
Heliozoa
This site presents the radical world of digital poetry, where AI meets the experimental poet. Weird doesn’t begin to cover it–which makes it perfect for classroom discussions.
AltSalt
Here you’ll find “4 Digital Poems That Will Make You Rethink What Poetry Is.” Excellent for talking through the genre and its limits.
Single Works
The poets listed here are well-known for their experimental, pioneering work.
Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
Charles Bernstein, “Questionnaire”
Cathy Park Hong, “Ballad in A”
GREAT PAIRINGS
Collections by Theme
The Poetry Foundation has amazing thematized collections of poetry! Check out their collections here. They also have these excellent collections:
Harlem Renaissance Collection
These pairs teach together wonderfully!
Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool” & Terrance Hayes, “The Golden Shovel”
Jimmy Santiago Baca, “I Am Offering this Poem” & James Baldwin, “The Giver”
Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” & Charles Bukowski, “So You Want to be a Writer”
Meg Day, “Batter My Heart, Transgender’d God” & John Donne, “Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God”
T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” & Esme Soriano, “Prufrock in Love”
THE SONNET
Shakespeare’s sonnets from the Folger Shakespeare Library
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus
Ron Padgett, “Nothing in that Drawer”
John Donne, “Death Be Not Proud” (Sonnet X)
John Keats, “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be”
