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.

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All TitlesModern FictionClassic FictionNonfictionPlaysEssaysPoetryMiddle Grade/YA
Fast Break
Edward Hirsch

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

Ode to Dirt
Sharon Olds

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

The Death of a Soldier
Wallace Stevens

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

Immigrants in Our Own Land
Jimmy Santiago Baca

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977

An Obstacle
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1884

Saturday at the Canal
Gary Soto

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1991

Sorrow Is Not My Name
Ross Gay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2011

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923

O Captain! My Captain!
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1850

"Hope" Is the Thing with Feathers
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891

Easter Wings
George Herbert

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1633

Messenger
Mary Oliver

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2006

Cynthia in the Snow
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1956

I Ask My Mother to Sing
Li-Young Lee

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1900

My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

The Lisbon Earthquake
Voltaire

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1756

Not an Elegy for Mike Brown
Danez Smith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1867

Knoxville, Tennessee
Nikki Giovanni

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

The Tyger
William Blake

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1794

Mid-Term Break
Seamus Heaney

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1966

The World Is Too Much with Us
William Wordsworth

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

The Tropics in New York
Claude McKay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

Miniver Cheevy
Edwin Arlington Robinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1910

The Victims
Sharon Olds

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1984

Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865

Theme for English B
Langston Hughes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951

After Apple-Picking
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1914

The Hand
Mary Ruefle

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1996

Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market
Pablo Neruda

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957

Scaffolding
Seamus Heaney

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1966

Mr. Edwards and the Spider
Robert Lowell

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1946

The Summer I Was Sixteen
Geraldine Connolly

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

Forgetfulness
Billy Collins

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

Driving to Town Late to Mail a Letter
Robert Bly

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

Some Days
Billy Collins

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1998

So You Want to Be a Writer?
Charles Bukowski

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

Nature
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1878

Birches
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

The Virus
Jericho Brown

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2019

Siren Song
Margaret Atwood

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

The Facebook Sonnet
Sherman Alexie

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2011

A Little Girl Tugs at the Tablecloth
Wisława Szymborska

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

Sonnet 29
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

The Rose that Grew from Concrete
Tupac Shakur

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1999

Death
William Butler Yeats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1933

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
John Donne

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1633

A Jelly-Fish
Marianne Moore

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1909

I Felt a Cleaving in my Mind
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1890

Deer Hit
Jon Loomis

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

The White Goddess
Robert Graves

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1948

Western Wind
Anonymous

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1500

A Small Needful Fact
Ross Gay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

Gate A-4
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2008

The Lamb
William Blake

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1789

Loud Music
Stephen Dobyns

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

The Gift
Li-Young Lee

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

The Fish
Elizabeth Bishop

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1946

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1865

Little Beast
Richard Siken

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2019

Heritage
Countee Cullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

Wild Geese
Mary Oliver

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2004

Remember
Christina Georgina Rossetti

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1862

This Is Just to Say
William Carlos Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1934

The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1854

Daddy
Sylvia Plath

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1964

The Hill We Climb
Amanda Gorman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2021

The Lesson of the Moth
Don Marquis

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1927

Talking in Bed
Philip Larkin

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1964

I heard a Fly buzz — when I died
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1896

The Bagel
David Ignatow

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

Lady Lazarus
Sylvia Plath

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1965

Bag of Bones
Dunya Mikhail

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2005

There Will Come Soft Rains
Sara Teasdale

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities
Chen Chen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

The Argument of His Book
Robert Herrick

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1648

Terminus
Seamus Heaney

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1820

We Are Not Responsible
Harryette Mullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

Mothers
Nikki Giovanni

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1972

Ox Cart Man
Donald Hall

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977

Still to be neat, still to be dressed
Ben Jonson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

Night, Death, Mississippi
Robert Hayden

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1966

A Litany in Time of Plague
Thomas Nashe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1600

Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1920

A Description of a City Shower
Jonathan Swift

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1710

The Island Within
Richard Blanco

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012

Puerto Rican Obituary
Pedro Pietri

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1973

The Glass Essay
Anne Carson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1994

Rosa Parks
Nikki Giovanni

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

The Last Wolf
Mary TallMountain

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1995

Dawn
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1912

The Albatross
Charles Baudelaire, Transl. Eli Siegel

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1861

If They Should Come for Us
Fatimah Asghar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

Otherwise
Jane Kenyon

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1996

A Careful Passion
Derek Walcott

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

Heart to Heart
Rita Dove

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2004

The Miracle of Morning
Amanda Gorman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2020