Guest columnist Beth Ann Fennelly analyzes Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 for its enduring relevance. The sonnet describes a speaker's journey from self-pity and envy to finding joy through love. Shakespeare ...

Oliver de la Paz’s poem is part of a series of “diaspora sonnets,” in which this one, along with others, create a whole, while each sonnet can still operate on its own. These sonnets don’t have all ...

Now’s the time for “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin,” Terrance Hayes’ electric, new book. In his five previous poetry collections — “Muscular Music” (1999), “Hip Logic” (2002), “Wind ...

This most famous of the one hundred fifty-four sonnets of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) evokes, as we all know, both the sweet sadness of the year’s waning and the less-sweet sadness of our own ...

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), who needs no introduction on a poetry page, was considered the greatest English poet — and perhaps one of the greatest poets of any language — to put pen to paper. The ...

I first came across the idea of the immured sonnet — an invention of contemporary Russian poet Philip Nikolayev — when I was studying at UMass Amherst, from which I graduated in 2009. I was very ...

Wanda Coleman’s work has that ineffable quality that accompanies poetry you understand in your belly and your head. And so when she says, “my delicious dilemma is language,” it makes all the sense in ...

Shakespeare’s sonnets are considered some of the literary genius' most popular works, with some - such as Sonnet 18’s “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day” - becoming the best-known works in ...

Love poems? Let's see how well you know them. Do you know the difference between a ballad and an elegy? Can you tell what a lyric is? Or can identity what a five line witty poem with a distinctive ...

Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (1875–1935) figured significantly in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s. Though prominent as a diarist, journalist, and activist for ...