Poetry
From Simmons Library Research Guides
We have selected these resources to help you find relevant information on your research topic. Please contact a librarian for help using the resources listed in this guide or for help with your research process.
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Reference and Background Information
Use the Simmons Eresource called [http://0-refuniv.odyssi.com.library.simmons.edu/ Reference Universe] to search for information about your topic in all of our Reference sources.
or, search for Reference sources that contain information about your specific research topic here:
You may also consult the resources below for overviews of the topic that you have chosen to research. Use these resources to help you to put your topic in context and give you the big picture of what information exists about your topic. These resources may have bibliographies at the end of each entry that can help further your research.
- Contemporary Poets
Level 1 Reference PR603 .C6 2001
This seventh edition Reference source contains information about contemporary English-language poets. The source is listed alphabetically by the poet's last name and contains biographical information such as nationality, birth date, educational background, family, career, awards, membership listings, and contact information. Other listed information includes the poet’s publications, other genres of writing, and a bibliography. Lastly, each section ends with comments from the poet, followed by an essay about the poet’s work. This source may be used as a dictionary and index.
- Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry in Anthologies
Reference PN1022 .G739 2002
Choice magazine uniquely describes this twelfth edition index, "As contemporary reference guides go, this freshly revised and expanded index is certainly one of the publishing world's less sexy productions, since practicality must trump aesthetics." Highly comprehensive, this index locates 81,000 poems and sites 12,735 authors from all parts of the world, ranging from ancient times to the present. Index is arranged alphabetically and divided into three indexes, including a title, first line, and last line index, author index, and subject index.
- The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry
Level 1 Reference PS303 .G74 2006
This five volume encyclopedia is comprehensive and is the largest Reference set assembled on the topic of American poets and poetry. Each of the passages are listed alphabetically by the last name of the poet, and by topic. For example, the poet Kim Addonizio (1954- ) is listed right before African American Poetry. This source covers a wide range of American poets and poetry, from the earliest appearance of poetry in what has to become United States, to poetry at the beginning of the twenty-first century. There are over 900 essays and includes essays on both recognizable and obscure poets throughout American history. The entries for each poet includes biographical information, published material, listed works and collections, and suggests further readings. Topical entries include definitions, historical examples, names of poets, and provides examples of specific poems related to the topic.
- Guide to American Poetry Explication
Level 1 Reference PS301 .G84 1989
This two volume Reference set lists extensive bibliographic sources for the explication of both American and British poetry. The first volume focuses on Colonial and Nineteenth-Century poets, and the second volume focuses on Modern and Contemporary poets. Each volume is organized alphabetically by the poet's last name. The name of the work is listed, followed by the bibliographic source with a full citation.
- LITfinder
Simmons Eresource
LITfinder is a directory of literature. Use it to identify citations for poems, stories, essays, plays, speeches, and more. Full-text for over a quarter of a million cited works are included.
- Use Litfinder to identify the work of over 90,000 poets including career biographies. In total, Litfinder includes citations for over 850,000 poems, 125,000 of which are full-text.
- The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
Level 1 Reference PN1021 .N39 1993
A comprehensive reference book that focuses on the national history of poetry, discusses both techniques and criticisms of poetry. This source provides surveys of 106 national poetries; descriptions of poetic forms and genres major and minor, traditional and emergent; detailed explanations of the devices of prosody and rhetoric; and overviews of all major schools of poetry ancient and modern, Western and Eastern. Furthermore, this text provides information of the major movements and issues in criticism and literary theory, and compares poetry to the other fields of human thought and activity-history, science, politics, religion, philosophy, music, the visual arts.
- The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry in English
Level 1 Reference PR601 .O9 1994 and Simmons Eresource
This is the most comprehensive guide to modern poetry in English. Celebrated poets offer intriguing views on their fellow poets, such as Tom Paulin on Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney on Robert Lowell, and Anne Stevenson on Sylvia Plath. 1,500 poets are covered from W.H. Auden to Benjamin Zephaniah. There is worldwide coverage, including America, Britain and Ireland, New Zealand, Trinidad and Zimbabwe. There are also entries on magazines, movements, and critical terms.
- The Poetry Dictionary
Level 1 Reference PN1021 .D78 2006
This petite and oftentimes entertaining dictionary explains poetic terms clearly and further clarifies definitions by including more than 100 illustrative examples of poems and stanzas by a diverse selection of poets ranging from Homer to Gwendolyn Brooks. This reference book may be more appropriate for the general reader as a helpful and useful guide, rather than someone doing in-depth resource.
Multicultural Poetry
- The Columbia Granger's Index to African-American Poetry
Level 1 Reference PS153.N5 C58 1999
This poetry index is divided into three sections, Title, First Line, and Last Line Index, Author Index, and Subject Index. A reference source that focuses on African American poetry; is both comprehensive and easy to use.
- Contemporary American Ethnic Poets: Lives, Works, Sources
Level 1 Reference PS153.M56 C66 2004
A medium-sized Reference book that contains information on seventy-five contemporary ethnically-centered poets, who have been published within the past several decades. This list specifically includes poets who are read in both high school and college classrooms. The poets are arranged alphabetically by their last name. Each poet’s section begins with biographical information followed by a thematic summary. Next, follows a bibliographical section listing the poet’s collection of poems, selected anthologies where the poetry appears, websites for and about the individual poets, additional works by the poet, and a list of selected resources for further reference.
Women's Poetry
- Contemporary Women Poets
Level 1 Reference PS151 .C67 1998
A reference source which provides biographical, bibliographical, critical information on approximately 250 women poets, 100 of whom are new to the series. The critical essays on each poet range from about 500 to 1000 words. The poets listed within this source include well-known poets such as Adrienne Rich and Ntozake Shange, to lesser-known poets, such as British poet Kate Clanchy. This compilation is useful because it allows the reader to explore each poet's work in relation to the other poets who are discussed, is easy to use, and will answers many academic questions.
- Poetry by American Women, 1900-1975: A Bibliography and Poetry by American Women, 1975-1989
Level 1 Reference PS303 .R42 1979 and Level 1 Reference PS303 .R42 1990
This bibliography which cites poetry by American women is split into two volumes, the first covers years 1900-1975, and the latter covers years 1975-1989. This bibliography provides access to more than 5,500 published women poets and lists 9,500 volumes. This reference source is meant to provide accessibility to a body of literature about women poets that at one time was generally unavailable. Lists published volumes of poetry alphabetically by women poets who are United States citizens, and who have published at least one volume; audio-visual works, collaborative efforts, mixed genre, reprints, foreign language editions, broadsides, and testimonial pieces have been excluded.
Finding Articles
Below are suggested databases and indexes for articles on the topic that you have chosen to research. These databases include articles from newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals. Articles are shorter and more narrowly focused than books or reference materials so you should use them after you have narrowed your topic.
- MLA Bibliography
Simmons Eresource
Provides some one million citations for items from over 4,000 journals and series published worldwide. It also indexes books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations, and bibliographies. Each record contains a bibliographic citation for a journal article, book, or other item, and library holdings for the journal title, book, or other item. The advanced search will allow users to limit searches to articles published in many foreign languages, including French.
- Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL)
Level 1 Reference PR83 .A59 and Simmons Eresource
ABELL comprehensively covers materials such as monographs, periodical articles, literary works, book reviews, collections of essays and doctoral dissertations that are published anywhere in the world.
- JSTOR
Simmons Eresource
JSTOR offers both multidisciplinary and discipline-specific collections. Provides full-text backfiles of many core scholarly journals, some dating back to the 1800s. However, JSTOR is not the database for current issues as it focuses on older journals.
- Project MUSE
Simmons Eresource
Offers nearly 250 quality journal titles from 40 scholarly publishers. As one of the academic community's primary electronic periodicals resources, Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics, and many others. Project MUSE is setting the standard for scholarly electronic journals in the humanities and social science.
- LION: Literature Online
Simmons Eresource
Fully searchable library of English and American poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies and key secondary sources. Literature Online features an ever-growing collection of over 330,000 works of poetry, drama and prose, plus biographies, bibliographies and key criticism and reference sources. The primary texts in Literature Online include English poetry from 600 to the present, American and African-American poetry from 1603 to the present, The Faber Poetry Library, English fiction from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, English drama from 1280 to 1915, and American drama from 1762 to 1832. Secondary Sources include LIFT, a literary journal index with full text of many articles, Webster's Dictionary, the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, the King James Bible, links to other Web resources, bibliographies for over 400 authors, and biographies for over 1,000 of the most-studied authors.
- Literary Reference Center
Simmons Eresource
Literary Reference Center (LRC) is a comprehensive literary reference database that provides a broad spectrum of reference information from antiquity to the present day. LRC is a completely full-text database that combines information from over 1,000 books and monographs, major literary encyclopedias and reference works, and hundreds of literary journals.
- Contemporary Literary Criticism
Simmons Eresource
An extensive collection of critical essays on contemporary authors. Each CLC - Select entry contains a biographical/critical introduction, listing of principal works, and sources for further study.
- Humanities Fulltext
Simmons Eresource
A database of article citations on topics in the Humanities, some available full-text. Includes content from more than 300 key humanities publications, including feature articles, book reviews, interviews, obituaries, bibliographies, original works of fiction (including dramas and poems), and reviews of plays, operas, ballets, dance, musicals, movies, and television and radio programs.
- Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, and Other Creative Writers, 1900-1960
Level 1 Reference PN94 .T83
This work presents excerpts of literary criticism on the works of major literary writers, including novelists, poets, playwrights and literary theorists, of 1900 to 1999 Each excerpt is prefaced by an annotation that explains the critic's reputation and critical philosophy and providing a synopsis of the excerpt. Every fourth volume is a Topics volume covering major literary movements, trends and other topics. Volumes include author, nationality, topic and title indexes.
- Academic Search Complete
Simmons Eresource
Academic Search Complete is a great place to start your search for both popular and scholarly articles, no matter what your topic is! It contains journals from almost every topic and is designed specifically for academic institutions. It provides more than 5,300 full-text periodicals, 4,400 of which are peer-reviewed journals. This resource also features content as far back as 1865.
- Academic Onefile
Simmons Eresource
Academic Onefile contains 8,000 academic journals, the majority in full-text, available in HTML and PDF formats. In addition it contains hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and the CBC.
- Expanded Academic ASAP
Simmons Eresource
From arts and the humanities to social sciences, science and technology, this database meets research needs across all academic disciplines. Access scholarly journals, news magazines, and newspapers - many with full text and images. Updated daily.
TIP: Use the Advanced Search for a more precise search!
Searching the Web
Tips for Searching the Internet:
- Use the advanced search function, which is available from most search engines:
- Google - See also "Advanced Search Tips"
- Ask - Click "Advanced." See also "Advanced Search Tips"
- Live (MSN) - See also "Options"
- Exalead - See also "Exalead FAQ"
- Yahoo! Search
- Limit your search to .edu and .gov sites. These often provide quality research, statistics, and commentary. Sites ending in .org often have good information, too, but are likely to espouse a strong stance or bias on the issues they cover and may not be objective.
- Try Scandoo, which presents search results from Google, Yahoo! Search, or Live (MSN) with an evaluation about the objectivity, credibility, and overall reliability of the site.
- Consider using a directory of pre-screened, annotated sites:
Writing Style and Citation
For more information on style and citation for this discipline, please contact the Simmons College Writing Center
You may also consider consulting these resources:
- Writing Resources
Free Online
The Writing Center provides online resources for citing your research. If you are unsure of which citation style to use, consult your professor and consider the following:- Use APA (American Psychological Association) when your topic is in the Social Sciences
- Use ASA (American Sociological Association) when your topic is in Sociology
- Use MLA (Modern Language Association) when your topic is in the Humanities
- Use Chicago/Turabian when your topic is in Literature, History or the Arts
- Use CSE (Council of Science Editors) when your topic is in the Sciences
- RefWorks
Simmons Eresource
RefWorks is a great program for organizing articles, books, and other materials you need for research. You can also use RefWorks to create bibliographies, create in text citations in your paper (Write-N-Cite), and share your research with others. Access RefWorks from the A-Z list of resources on the library's web page, and then follow the instructions to create your own username and password. We hold RefWorks Clinics throughout the semester. For more information, ask a reference librarian
