Research Guides: Poetry Criticism: Reference Works

Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, and Handbooks

Reference sources like encyclopedias, dictionaries, and handbooks can help you establish a solid foundation for your criticism. It can help you contextualize the poem in terms of its theoretical ideas, historical situation, or literary movement. They may also provide you with biographical information about the poet and some criticism of the poem that you can interact with in your paper. Criticism on poems can be found in a number of reference books and online databases.

Poetry for Students
Call Number: Online

Literature Resource Center (Gale)
Available online
Find primary sources, critical articles, literary and cultural analysis, and biographies. Also has a "Topic Finder" to help you choose and narrow your topic, and find background information.

Critical Survey of Poetry by Philip K. Jason (Editor); Tracy Irons-Geroges (Editorial Coordinator); Christina J. Moose (Editorial Coordinator); Dawn P. Dawson (Editor-In-Chief)
Call Number: PN 1021 C7 2003

The Critical Survey of Literature series brings to libraries in-depth analytical reference guides to the major writers of world literature. The series has an accessible style and format that allow readers to zero in on precise characteristics of an author's work rather than merely receive a generalized discussion.
Masterplots II, Poetry Series by Philip K. Jason (Editor); Tracy Irons-Georges (Editorial Coordinator); Dawn P. Dawson (Editor-In-Chief); Salem Press Editors
Call Number: PN 1110.5 M37 2002

Masterplots II: Drama Series covers plays by important 20th century playwrights, such as Samuel Beckett, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'neill, George Bernard Shaw, neil Simon, and tennessee Williams.