Online Poetry

Love Poetry – Romance Poems

Our favorite short love and romance poems and friendship poetry. Poems about love are a great way to express how you are feeling and can help you build a stronger relationship. It is very easy to say I love you every day but when you place it in writing it can have greater weight.

Inspirational Poetry – Inspiring Motivational Poems

A collection of motivational poems to add a positive thought to your day. Use this motivating poetry to reflect on, and, let the inspirational words of wisdom in our Featured Poem motivate and inspire you. Robert Frost is quoted as saying, “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom”.

Famous Poetry – Famous Poems

We encounter famous poems day in and day out, but many people don’t take the time to dig deeper and learn more about them. Focusing on a particular poem and the poet who wrote it adds a richness to daily life.

T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot ranks among the most important poets of the 1900′s. In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “The Waste Land,” and other poems, he departed radically from the techniques and subject matter of pre-World War I poetry. His poetry, along with his critical works, helped to reshape modern literature. Eliot received the 1948 Nobel Price for Literature.

Lewis Carroll

Carroll was born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson on Jan. 27, 1832, at Daresbury in Cheshire, England. His father was a clergyman, and Charles was the eldest of 11 children–four boys and seven girls.

E.E Cummings

Unconventional in every way, the poet Edward Estlin Cummings made striking use of grammar and punctuation–so much so that he often referred to himself as “i” and signed his name in lowercase letters as well: e.e. cummings. His arts were poetry, painting, and drama, and in all of them he was an experimenter and innovator.

Countee Cullen

U.S. poet, born in New York, N.Y.; wrote of comedy and tragedy in life of black Americans with lyric, wistful beauty. The poet Countee Cullen was one of the major contributors to the 1920s literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Through his verse, Cullen gave expression to the character of African-American life as he experienced it.

William Butler Yeats

Yeats was born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865, the eldest son of an artist. Although the family soon moved to London, the children spent much time with their grandparents in County Sligo in northwestern Ireland. The scenery and folklore of this region greatly influenced Yeats’s work. For a while he studied art, but during the 1890s he became active in London’s literary life and helped found the Rhymers’ Club.

William Blake

“I do not behold the outward creation… it is a hindrance and not action.” Thus William Blake–painter, engraver, and poet–explained why his work was filled with religious visions rather than with subjects from everyday life. Few people in his time realized that Blake expressed these visions with talent that approached genius. He lived in near poverty and died unrecognized. Today, however, Blake is acclaimed one of England’s great figures of art and literature and one of the most inspired and original painters of his time.

John Masefield

Poet laureate of Great Britain from 1930 until his death, John Masefield was only 22 years old when he wrote the simple and moving lines in his poem ‘Sea Fever’. Masefield was born on June 1, 1878, in Ledbury, Herefordshire, England. After his father’s death he was looked after by an uncle. Young Masefield wanted to be a merchant marine officer. At 13 he boarded the training ship Conway moored in the river Mersey.

LI PO

A major Chinese poet in the T’ang Dynasty, Li Po was a romantic who wrote about the joys of nature, love, friendship, solitude, and wine. While gaining a reputation as a poet, he tried in vain to become an official at court. Li Po was born in 701 in what is now the province of Sichuan (Szechwan). He began to live as a wanderer when he was 19. After a few years he married and settled down temporarily with his wife’s family near Hankou, now a part of Wuhan.

Rainer Maria Rilke

The German author Rainer Maria Rilke is best known for his poetry, in which he attempted to come to terms with his fearful perceptions of life. His personal spiritual crisis was related to his view of a larger crisis of society, and both are reflected in the poetry he created.