A Celebration of Poetry in the Collections

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaimed March 21 as World Poetry Day, and April has been proclaimed National Poetry Month by the Academy of American Poets. In recognition, explore our poetry-related collections and listen to poetry with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.

John Updike

Phillis Wheatley (frontispiece to "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral")

Maya Angelou, Algonquin Hotel, New York, NY, 1987

W. E. B. Du Bois

Anne Sexton

Maya Angelou, Algonquin Hotel, New York, NY, 1987

John Updike

James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson

Il Penseroso

Ntozake Shange - poet

Meissen figure group

Maud Slye (1879-1954)

William Gilmore Simms

3c Edgar Allan Poe single

Folio from a Shahnama (Book of kings) by Firdawsi (d.1020); recto: text: he creation of the world, he creation of man, the creation of the sun and moon; verso: text: he Prophet Muhammad, the compilation of the Shahnama, the poet Daqiqi

Sheikh Amadou Bamba

Portrait of Minamoto no Kintada

Elizabeth Bishop

Allen Tate

Selected Poems by Ezra Pound

Robert Frost

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and Enrique Riverón

John Ashbery

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and Enrique Riverón

Broadside No. 46: A Simple Poem to Mae

Maquette of Book Cover Design, Dylan Thomas: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Loomis Pound

Ezra Loomis Pound

5c American Poets Walt Whitman plate block of four

Ezra Loomis Pound

Book of poetry

Anthology of Poetry

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