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
If We Could Only Rise Above It All, By: Neal Grace
If we could only rise above it all without any residue of dark memories whose talons pierce our hearts, and whose imprints have cast its iron masks upon the innocence of our childhood self— so that we breathe the freshness and vitality of a new day as if sitting in a shrine of joy and beauty. Where freedom lifts us higher into the ethers of our dreams, where we hear hymns … [Read more...] about If We Could Only Rise Above It All, By: Neal Grace
Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Where to Start
Shakespeare's Sonnets: where to start? Begin with the five most famous, Sonnets 18, 116, 130, 29 and 73, then follow the story groups that run through the sequence: the early sonnets urging a young man to marry, the sonnets about time and poetry, and the darker sonnets about the woman readers call the Dark Lady. Poetry Catalog has all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets, and this … [Read more...] about Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Where to Start
She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways Summary and Analysis
This She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways summary begins with an unknown girl. In twelve short lines, William Wordsworth describes Lucy, a young woman who lived in a remote place beside the springs of the River Dove. Hardly anyone praised her, and very few loved her. She was as hidden as a violet half covered by a mossy stone. Now she has died, almost unnoticed by the world, "But … [Read more...] about She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways Summary and Analysis
The Solitary Reaper Summary and Analysis
This The Solitary Reaper summary begins in a Scottish field. William Wordsworth's speaker comes across a young Highland woman cutting grain alone and singing a sad song. He cannot understand the words, but the music fills the valley and moves him deeply. He wonders what she is singing about, then walks on up the hill, carrying the music in his heart "Long after it was heard no … [Read more...] about The Solitary Reaper Summary and Analysis
Stanzas to a Hindoo Air, By: Lord Byron
Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!Where is my lover? where is my lover?Is it his bark which my dreary dreams discover?Far—far away! and alone along the billow? Oh! my lonely—lonely—lonely—Pillow!Why must my head ache where his gentle brow lay?How the long night flags lovelessly and slowly,And my head droops over thee like the willow! Oh! thou, my sad and solitary … [Read more...] about Stanzas to a Hindoo Air, By: Lord Byron