This is the final post in my “Sunday night poetry” series, which also coincidentally marks the end of National Poetry Month. Rather than post one last poem, I point to some resources for those who enjoyed some of these poems and want to read more, and learn more, about poems, poets, and poetry.

For an art that today has a relatively small audience and relatively little cultural impact, there’s a surprisingly large number of people happy to explain poetry to you. For example, searching the Internet Archive for the title How to Read a Poem turned up books from (in alphabetical order) Terry Eagleton, Edward Hirsch, Nancy C. Millet and Helen J. Throckmorton, Molly Peacock, Burton Raffel, and Tania Runyan. There are other books with slight variations on that title, and others on the same general theme.

Rather than overwhelm you with my opinions on these and other books (most of which I haven’t read), I would point you to two people whose thoughts on poems are worth consideration and may be helpful to you, Stephanie Burt and Helen Hennessy Vendler.