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Poetry and Poetry Criticism

Searching the Library Catalog

Use Advanced Search in the HSU Library Catalog and search by Subject to find collections of poems on a particular subject or by a particular type of authors. Use all of these for your descriptive terms, and include NOT criticism in the search. Here are some examples of descriptive terms to use:

abraham lincoln poetry
african american poetry
birds poetry
christmas poetry
mexican american poetry
love poetry
poetry collections
poetry women authors

Digital Collections

  • Allen Ginsberg Project
    The website of the Allen Ginsberg Estate which offers access to the vast collection of Ginsberg material. Explore published and never-before-published text, photos, hand-written documents and audio and video materials representing Allen's life-work.
  • The Walt Whitman Archive
    The Walt Whitman Archive is an electronic research and teaching tool that sets out to make Whitman's vast work, for the first time, easily and conveniently accessible to scholars, students, and general readers. Whitman, America's most influential poet and one of the four or five most innovative and significant writers in United States history, is the most challenging of all American authors in terms of the textual difficulties his work presents.
  • The Poetess Archive
    This archive constitutes a resource for studying the literary history of popular British and American poetry. Much of it composed during what can be called the “bull market” of poetry's popularity, late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century popular poetry was often written in what came to be designated an "effeminate" style, whether written by men or women. Writings in the poetess tradition were disseminated in myriad collections: miscellanies, beauties, literary annuals, gift books. They achieved a place of prominence in virtually every middle-class household. The Poetess Archive Database now contains a bibliography of over 4,000 entries for works by and about writers working in and against the “poetess tradition,” the extraordinarily popular, but much criticized, flowery poetry written in Britain and America between 1750 and 1900.
  • Romantic Circles (University of Maryland)
    Romantic Circles is a refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture.

Browse the 3rd Floor for Collections of Poetry

You can browse on the third floor of the Library among the books on literature. Here are some general call numbers to start:

PN 6099-6110 Miscellaneous and general poetry collections
PN 6109.9 Miscellaneous and general collections of poetry by women authors
PR 117-1227 Collections of English poetry
PS 589 Collections of American poetry by women
PS 591 American poetry collections arranged by ethnic group

Books of Poems in the HSU Library