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English

Guide to library and other resources on English, including literary criticism and writing.

Finding a Specific Poem

Poetry comes in collections, such as the Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou, and sometimes finding what collection a specific individual poem is located in can be difficult. These tools can help you identify what collection to use.

Catalogs

Use the catalogs to find a collection. More recent items are likely to the table of contents, so if you search for a particular poem it will find it within a collection.

Online Search

The American & English Literature database has large collections of poems. You can search the entire poetry collection at once or particular subcollections, such as African-American Poetry 1700-1900.

While Google Books only shows a preview, searching a poem's title should identify what collections have that poem. You can then get the book using the Beeghly or OhioLINK catalogs. 

Poetry Online

Poems on the free web.