On Burns Night this Sunday – and 235 years after Tam O'Shanter was published in 1791 – Scots everywhere may well be treated to a masterwork with a unique, universal appeal.

Some books, like “The Institutionalist Approach to Public Utility Regulation,” defeat commentary; others, like “Ulysses,” invite it. “Pale Fire,” Vladimir Nabokov’s resplendent rare bird of a novel, ...

William Blake’s “The Clod & the Pebble” is a dialogue on tenderness and cruelty in three short stanzas. Read it with our ...

American Smooth by Rita Dove We were dancing—it must have been a foxtrot or a waltz, something romantic but requiring restraint, rise and fall, precise execution as we moved into the next song without ...

The famous words "'Twas the night before Christmas" shaped the holiday by popularizing stockings, reindeer, and even Santa Claus. But the classic poem also sparked a centuries-long controversy. Now, ...

The words of Emma Lazarus’s famous 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus” have seemed more visible since Donald Trump’s election. They can be found on the news and on posters, in tweets and in the streets.

The medieval poem “Pearl” was written by someone whose identity we do not know, and is set mostly within a dream. Neither of these facts is unusual in medieval poetry. Authorship is often unclear for ...

Poet and performance artist John Giorno launched Dial-a-Poem in the 1960s to deliver random poems over the phone. Now, a group continues his work on a new medium — the internet. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1 ...

To avoid persecution by Stalin, the poet Anna Akhmatova burnt her writings and instead taught a circle of friends the words of her poem Requiem off by heart. By going ‘pre-Gutenberg’ she ensured its ...

Michelle Hamadache does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...