Study Guide Library

Explore an ever-expanding selection of titles ranging from classic texts to contemporary works. SuperSummary Study Guides feature detailed summaries plus analyses of major themes, symbols, characters, and important quotes—all written by literature scholars and experts. Browse titles alphabetically or by genre.

There’s more! Find quick synopses of thousands more titles in our Plot Summary Library and check out our Teaching Guide Library for classroom-ready resources.

All TitlesModern FictionClassic FictionNonfictionPlaysEssaysPoetryMiddle Grade/YA
The Raven
Edgar Allan Poe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1845

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey ...
William Wordsworth

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1798

Chosen
Marilyn Nelson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

Aubade
Major Jackson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

Dim Lady
Harryette Mullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1914

An American Sunrise
Joy Harjo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1919

Love Song for Alex, 1979
Margaret Walker

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1989

Gretel in Darkness
Louise Glück

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1975

Ego Tripping
Nikki Giovanni

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

Iambicum Trimetrum
Edmund Spenser

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1580

Old Pond
Basho

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1686

Facing It
Yusef Komunyakaa

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1988

Meg Merrilies
John Keats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1818

Fragment 31
Sappho

Fiction | Poem | Adult | BCE

One Art
Elizabeth Bishop

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1976

Sonnet 18
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

Kubla Khan
Samuel Coleridge

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

Childhood Memories
William Saphier

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1920

On Anger
Rage Hezekiah

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2019

Whales Weep Not!
D. H. Lawrence

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1932

Thebaid
Statius, Transl. Jane Wilson Joyce

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 92

Wait
Galway Kinnell

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

My Love Sent Me a List
Olena Kalytiak Davis

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1751

Snow-Bound: A Winter Idyl
John Greenleaf Whittier

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865

I See the Boys of Summer
Dylan Thomas

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1939

Tear it Down
Jack Gilbert

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1994

Frederick Douglass
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1913

Good Man
Angelo 'Eyeambic' Geter

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020

Again Later
Martha Collins

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020

Parents
William Meredith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

What the Living Do
Marie Howe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

Burning the Old Year
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1995

October
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1913

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies
Joy Harjo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

A Poison Tree
William Blake

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794

From Blossoms
Li-Young Lee

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1988

A Far Cry from Africa
Derek Walcott

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

To a Daughter Leaving Home
Linda Pastan

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

Black Cat
Rainer Maria Rilke

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

A Psalm Of Life
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1838

A Shropshire Lad, Poem XXXVI
A. E. Housman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1896

Requiem
Robert Louis Stevenson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

Putting in the Seed
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

We Lived Happily During the War
Ilya Kaminsky

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

Dead Stars
Ada Limón

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

Social Distancing
Juan Felipe Herrera

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020

A Following
Charles Bukowski

Fiction | Poem | Adult

Love at First Sight
Wisława Szymborska

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

Once by the Pacific
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1928

Wade in the Water
Tracy K. Smith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

The Secretary Chant
Marge Piercy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1973

See How the Roses Burn!
Hafez

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1300

The Conundrum of the Workshops
Rudyard Kipling

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890

The End and the Beginning
Wisława Szymborska

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1929

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Martín Espada

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

I Sit and Sew
Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1988

On Being Brought from Africa to America
Phillis Wheatley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1773

Ruins of a Great House
Derek Walcott

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1953

The Blue Bowl
Jane Kenyon

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005

Ode to Teachers
Pat Mora

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2010

The White Man's Burden
Rudyard Kipling

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1899

Abandoned Farmhouse
Ted Kooser

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

Still Life in Landscape
Sharon Olds

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2004

A Dog Has Died
Pablo Neruda

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

All That I Owe the Fellows of the Grave
Dylan Thomas

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1933

Snow
David Berman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

To Daffodils
Robert Herrick

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1665

Tula ["Books are door shaped"]
Margarita Engle

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

Valentine for Ernest Mann
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1994

Abuelito Who
Sandra Cisneros

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

The Lost Baby Poem
Lucille Clifton

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

Making a Fist
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1988

Dothead
Amit Majmudar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

Identity
Julio Noboa

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977

Slam, Dunk, & Hook
Yusef Komunyakaa

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

Hate Poem
Julie Sheehan

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2006

Burning a Book
William Stafford

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

The Courage That My Mother Had
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1956

Legal Alien
Pat Mora

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1985

My Papa's Waltz
Theodore Roethke

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1942

"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"
Omar Khayyam

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1100

No Man Is an Island
John Donne

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1624

Fame Is a Fickle Food (1702)
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1914

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
Anonymous

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1930

I Sit and Look Out
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1860

Jazz Fantasia
Carl Sandburg

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

Did I Miss Anything?
Tom Wayman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

Mother to Son
Langston Hughes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Anne Sexton

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1981

Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999