Research Guides: Poetry Criticism: Journal Articles

Finding Articles

Once a poet has achieved some degree of recognition, people who study poetry will analyze and write articles about his or her poems. Even if an article doesn't mention the poem you are interested in, it may still say something about the poet's style, technique or themes.

The Quick Topic Search (on the library's homepage) will find articles from academic publications and articles from non-academic publications (such as magazines and newspapers). It can be a great place to start your research. However, the Quick Topic Search does not cover all of Langara's article databases. It may be necessary to search in individual article databases to find the most relevant sources for your paper. If you are looking for scholarly articles only, select the "Peer Reviewed" limiter when looking at the search results.

If you are having trouble deciding what is or isn't scholarly, check out our Scholarly vs. Popular Help Guide.

Scholarly journals vs popular magazines (Langara Library)
How to spot the differences.

Search Tips:

Type the poet's name AND the title of the poem in the search boxes.
Use "..." quotation marks around the title of the poem to ensure that the search looks only for that exact title.
If you don't find anything at first, try changing the search to look for the title of the poem in the "full text" of the article. You may find criticism or book reviews this way.
If you have trouble finding articles on your particular poem, look for articles just about that poet. There will be more to sift through, but you can apply the same ideas, themes, or interact with the analyses of other poetry, stories, or novels.

Databases

If the Quick Topic Search is returning too much or too little, try these scholarly databases to find more articles:

NOTE: If you are using a computer off-campus, be prepared to enter your Langara email & password.

Academic Search Complete This link opens in a new window
Indexes 13,800+ magazines and journals, with full text articles from over 9,000. Covers many subject areas. Limit your search results to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) journals for academic resources only.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Full text for a number of major English literature journals, covering many years. It may sometimes be difficult to navigate, but it is often worth the struggle.
Gale Artemis: Literary Sources This link opens in a new window
Search journals, reference works, and primary sources for critical articles, literary and cultural analysis and biographies. Also has a "Topic Finder" that may help you get ideas for topics or narrow an existing topic.
CBCA - Canadian Business & Current Affairs This link opens in a new window
Essential resource for Canadian literature. Contains both scholarly and non-scholarly publications. Select Scholarly journals while searching to limit your results to academic resources only. Not covered by Quick Topic Search.
Humanities Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes reviews, bibliographies, fiction, poetry and more from noted scholarly sources and lesser-known but important specialized magazines. Some articles will not be in full-text, but the Langara Library may have access through other databases. Use the "Get Full Article" link to find out and use Interlibrary Loan.
Access: Langara ID & password required for off-campus use
Taylor and Francis Social Science & Humanities Library This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 1,300 online academic journals including several dozen literature titles.

Need to find databases for other subjects or need more suggestions? Look at the list of all of our databases.

List of All Langara Databases