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
A HOMECOMING, By: Geoffrey Heptonstall
I speak what I see of the earth. The echo I hear is Adam’s. This is the moment of Creation coming alive to the sound of ancient origin. Ancestral ambition matures with a fecund afterthought. There is music emerging. Horses seek shade from the sun. The spangle gall breaks the silence. Here they shelter, the fallen fruit with a soursweet lingering. Creatures of all kinds seek … [Read more...] about A HOMECOMING, By: Geoffrey Heptonstall
What Is The Conqueror Worm About?
What is The Conqueror Worm about? Edgar Allan Poe's poem pictures human life as a play watched by weeping angels. The actors are puppets pushed around by vast, invisible forces, endlessly chasing a phantom they never catch. Then a blood-red worm crawls onto the stage and devours them. The curtain falls like a funeral shroud, and the angels announce that the play is the tragedy … [Read more...] about What Is The Conqueror Worm About?
Ode to the West Wind Summary and Analysis
This Ode to the West Wind summary begins with a powerful autumn storm. Percy Bysshe Shelley's speaker calls on the west wind, which drives dead leaves, clouds and ocean waves before it. The wind is both "Destroyer and preserver": it kills the old year but scatters the seeds of spring. Feeling weighed down and worn out, the speaker begs the wind to lift him and to spread his … [Read more...] about Ode to the West Wind Summary and Analysis
Ozymandias Summary and Analysis
This Ozymandias summary begins with a traveler's story. In Percy Bysshe Shelley's sonnet, the speaker meets someone who has come from "an antique land." The traveler describes a ruined statue in the desert: two huge legs of stone and a broken face with a sneer of cold command. On the pedestal, the king boasts, "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" But nothing else … [Read more...] about Ozymandias Summary and Analysis
What Is Ulalume About?
What is Ulalume about? Edgar Allan Poe's poem tells of a grieving man who wanders at night in October with his Soul, called Psyche. A bright star rises, and he wants to follow it, hoping it will lead him to peace, though Psyche begs him not to. The path ends at a tomb. It belongs to his lost love, Ulalume, whom he buried on that very night a year before. Without realizing it, … [Read more...] about What Is Ulalume About?