‘We Wear the Mask’ is a poem by the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), written in 1895 and included in Dunbar’s 1896 collection Majors and Minors. In the poem, Dunbar writes about the fact that many members of a marginalised community (which can be tacitly understood to mean the […]
‘My Papa’s Waltz’ is one of the most popular and most widely studied poems by the American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-63). In this poem, published in 1948, Roethke recalls dancing with his drunken father, remembering this childhood experience with mixed feelings. You can read ‘My Papa’s Waltz’ here – the […]
‘Two-Headed Calf’ is a short poem by the American poet Laura Gilpin (1950-2007). If Gilpin had written nothing else besides this nine-line poem she would be fondly remembered by many, because in this short piece she manages to pack as much powerful emotion as we find in many longer poems.
Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-84) was the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral appeared in 1773 when she was probably still in her early twenties. Because Wheatley stands at the beginning of a long tradition of African-American poetry, it’s worth considering […]
Previously, we selected ten poems about fire, but what about fire’s elemental opposite? What are the best poems about ice and icy things, whether the poem deals in literal ice and icy landscapes, or in ice as a metaphor for extreme coldness of some kind? Below, we select and introduce […]