Primary Source Spotlight: Poetry

Last Updated on March 29, 2022

April certainly is not the cruelest month if you’re looking for poetry resources from the Library of Congress. LOC.gov has loads of treasures to choose from.

Teaching resources

• Primary Source Learning: Poets & Poetry

Library Collections

• Collection Spotlight: Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature
• Collections with significant poetry-related content
• Living Nations, Living Words story map featuring 47 contemporary Native Nations poets

PSN poet primary source collections

• Sherwood Anderson
• Gwendolyn Brooks
• Billy Collins
• Emily Dickinson
• Paul Laurence Dunbar
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Robert Frost
• Langston Hughes
• James Weldon Johnson
• Helen Keller
• Stanley Kunitz
• Vachel Lindsay
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Archibald MacLeish
• Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Gabriela Mistral
• Pablo Neruda
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Patricia Smith
• Tracy K. Smith
• Natasha Trethewey
• Robert Penn Warren
• Phyllis Wheatley
• Poets & the Seasons

Poetry featured images

• The Book of Kings by Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī
• El Paso Herald 1915 Christmas Page
• A Happy New Year 1914 by Lord Tennyson
• Winged Time by William Blake

Digitized poetry materials

• Poetry books
• Poetry broadsides
• William Blake collection
• Little Ann and Other Poems by Jane and Ann Taylor; illustrated by Kate Greenaway (1883) Page Turner – PDF – Bibliographic Information
• The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe; illustrated By Gustave Doré; (1884) Page Turner – PDF – Bibliographic Information

From the Catbird Seat: Poetry from the Library of Congress archived recordings of poets reading and discussing their work

Multimedia & music

• Poetry of America: Readings & Commentary collection of field recordings
• Poetry event video recordings
• Poetry audio recordings
• Poet Vision Video Series
• “The Poet and the Poem” Audio Podcasts
• Poetry image set
• Songs about poets (audio)
• Poetry sheet music

Poetry online exhibition materials

• A Century of Creativity: The MacDowell Colony 1907-2007
• Revising Himself: Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass
• Walt Whitman and the Civil War
• A Whitman Notebook
• Anne Bradstreet, Colonial Poet
• Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Renascence”
• Poetry of Robert Frost
• Poetry, Narrative, and Surinomo   (scroll down to access section)
• Shakespeare in America

Civil War Poetry Resources

Presidential poetry resources

• George Washington
• Thomas Jefferson
• James Madison
• John Quincy Adams
• John Tyler
• Abraham Lincoln
• Warren G. Harding
• Jimmy Carter
• Barack Obama
• Frequently Asked Questions

Poetry broadsides

U.S. poets laureate resources

• Current poet laureate
• Poetry in America (essays, readings, discussions)
• American life in poetry
• Favorite poem project
• Poetry 180

Library of Congress From the Catbird Seat blog posts

• Keyword: Poetry
• Keyword: Poem

More Library blog posts

• Curator’s Picks: American Women Poets Library of Congress Blog March 26, 2015
• The Library in History: Love in the Stacks Library of Congress Blog April 1, 2015
• National Poets Library of Congress Blog April 7, 2015
• Poetic Decisions In Custodia Legis April 30, 2018

More resources

• World War I Poetry Topics in Chronicling America
• National Poets Library of Congress Magazine March/April 2015 (pp. 11-15; see also pp. 27-28)
• Integrating Tech: Poetry 180