November 2026 is the season's big book-prize month for poets. Yale, BOA, Georgia, Nightboat, Fordham's Poetic Justice prizes and Beloit's Chad Walsh chapbook all close, plus a handful of single-poem contests, broadsides and paying journal calls. Below is a curated roundup of poetry contests November 2026 and related calls we verified on official contest or publisher pages. … [Read more...] about Poetry Submission Deadlines November 2026
What Is The Bells About?
What is The Bells about? Edgar Allan Poe's poem follows four kinds of bells, silver sleigh bells, golden wedding bells, brass alarm bells and iron funeral bells, and in doing so moves through a whole human life, from youthful merriment to marriage, terror and death. The poem is famous for its sound. Poe repeats the word "bells" again and again and uses words like "tinkle," … [Read more...] about What Is The Bells About?
Eldorado Summary and Analysis
This Eldorado summary begins with a cheerful knight. In Edgar Allan Poe's short ballad, a brave knight rides out singing, searching for Eldorado, the legendary land of gold. He searches all his life but never finds it. Old and failing, he meets a "pilgrim shadow" and asks where Eldorado can be. The shadow tells him to ride on, over the Mountains of the Moon and down the Valley … [Read more...] about Eldorado Summary and Analysis
The Sick Rose Summary and Analysis
This The Sick Rose summary starts with one of the shortest famous poems in English. In just eight lines, William Blake's speaker tells a rose that it is sick. An invisible worm, flying through a stormy night, has found the rose's "bed / Of crimson joy," and its "dark secret love" is destroying the flower's life. The poem is tiny, but its meaning has puzzled and fascinated … [Read more...] about The Sick Rose Summary and Analysis
Ravenna, By: Oscar Wilde
I. A year ago I breathed the Italian air,—And yet, methinks this northern Spring is fair,—These fields made golden with the flower of March,The throstle singing on the feathered larch,The cawing rooks, the wood-doves fluttering by,The little clouds that race across the sky;And fair the violet’s gentle drooping head,The primrose, pale for love uncomforted,The rose that … [Read more...] about Ravenna, By: Oscar Wilde
To Milton Summary and Analysis
This To Milton summary begins with a complaint about England. Oscar Wilde addresses John Milton, the great 17th-century poet who served Oliver Cromwell's republic, and says that Milton's spirit has left the country. Modern England, Wilde argues, has become shallow and badly led. The poem deliberately echoes Wordsworth's sonnet "London, 1802," which opens "Milton! thou should'st … [Read more...] about To Milton Summary and Analysis