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
America
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1888

Race
Elizabeth Alexander

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

To an Athlete Dying Young
A. E. Housman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1896

Things We Carry on the Sea
Wang Ping

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

Spring Storm
William Carlos Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921

Counting Descent
Clint Smith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016

The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1854

Afro-Latina
Elizabeth Acevedo

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2015

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915

To Elsie
William Carlos Williams

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1945

The Eagle
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1851

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years From Now
Matthew Olzmann

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

Invictus
William Ernest Henley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1889

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Adrienne Rich

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1970

Elliptical
Harryette Mullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2002

To My Dear and Loving Husband
Anne Bradstreet

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1678

Backdrop Addresses Cowboy
Margaret Atwood

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

Selling Manhattan
Carol Ann Duffy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

From The Dark Tower
Countee Cullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1922

The Triumph of Achilles
Louise Glück

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1985

Sonnet 76
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1976

George Gray
Edgar Lee Masters

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

Dirt
Kwame Dawes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1921

The Book of Yolek
Anthony Hecht

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1982

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
John Keats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1848

A Time To Talk
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1972

The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963

There is no Frigate like a Book
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1866

To Be in Love
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963

Tamerlane
Edgar Allan Poe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1827

I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891

Boy Breaking Glass
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

Some Afternoons She Does Not Pick Up the Phone
Anne Carson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

The Mountain
Elizabeth Bishop

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952

Frederick Douglass
Robert Hayden

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1947

When There Were Ghosts
Alberto Ríos

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

Dusting
Rita Dove

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1986

Problems with Hurricanes
Victor Hernández Cruz

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001

The Writer
Richard Wilbur

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1969

Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1936

Dreams
Nikki Giovanni

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

Evening Hawk
Robert Penn Warren

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1985

The Blackstone Rangers
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1987

The Street
Robert Pinsky

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2017

If You Forget Me
Pablo Neruda

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1952

Nineteen
Elizabeth Alexander

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

Freedom Summer
J. Patrick Lewis

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2012

A New National Anthem
Ada Limón

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018

Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1980

To The Diaspora
Gwendolyn Brooks

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014

To Be Of Use
Marge Piercy

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1973

For A Poet
Countee Cullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1929

Not Waving but Drowning
Stevie Smith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1957

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Gil Scott-Heron

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1971

Ash Wednesday
T. S. Eliot

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1930

Acquainted with the Night
Robert Frost

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1928

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1856

The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1925

Sonnet 60
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

Who Understands Me but Me
Jimmy Santiago Baca

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1990

On Friendship
Phillis Wheatley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1769

Verses upon the Burning of our House
Anne Bradstreet

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1678

Incident
Countee Cullen

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1925

The Illiterate
William Meredith

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1958

Sonnet 138: When my love swears that she is made of truth
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1599

A Noiseless Patient Spider
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1868

Casey at the Bat
Ernest Lawrence Thayer

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1888

Blowin' in the Wind
Bob Dylan

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1962

Depression
Sonia Sanchez

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1978

Sonnet 129
William Shakespeare

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1609

The Unknown Citizen
W. H. Auden

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1940

Sympathy
Paul Laurence Dunbar

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1899

On the Pulse of Morning
Maya Angelou

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1993

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
William Blake

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1789

Wuthering Heights
Sylvia Plath

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1961

The Lake
Edgar Allan Poe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1827

My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1807

In The Park
Gwen Harwood

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1961

America
Phillis Wheatley

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1772

Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines
Pablo Neruda

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1924

A Bird, came down the Walk
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1891

The Applicant
Sylvia Plath

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963

Journey of the Magi
T. S. Eliot

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1927

I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain
Emily Dickinson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1896

Where the Sidewalk Ends
Shel Silverstein

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

High Flight
John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1942

The Author to Her Book
Anne Bradstreet

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1678

The Harlem Dancer
Claude McKay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1917

Grass
Carl Sandburg

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1918

London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal
Samuel Johnson

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1738

I Sing the Body Electric
Walt Whitman

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1855

No Second Troy
William Butler Yeats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1916

The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Robert Browning

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1842

Ode on Melancholy
John Keats

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1819

The Art of Love
Ovid

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 2

Midsummer XXVII
Derek Walcott

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1984

Prometheus
Lord George Gordon Byron (Lord Byron)

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

I Lost My Talk
Rita Joe

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2007