Poetry Classics: To Helen, By Edgar Allan Poe
"To Helen" is the first of two poems to carry that name written by Edgar Allan Poe. The 15-line poem was written in honor of Jane Stanard, the mother of a childhood friend. It was first published in the 1831 collection Poems of Edgar A. Poe.
Poetry Classics: A Dream, By Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was one of the greatest yet mysterious poets in the world. His life shaped his poems and short stories; all the misery, sorrow, romantic feelings Poe suffered was expressed through his poems and short stories. He was part of the famous American Romantic Movement, consequently, most of his work was dark and disturbing.
Short Story Classics: Love Suicides, By Yasunari Kawabata
Palm-of-the-Hand Stories (掌の小説 tenohira / tanagokoro no shōsetsu) is the name Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata gave to more than 140 short stories he wrote over his long career, though he reputedly preferred the reading tanagokoro for the 掌 character. The earliest story was published in 1920 with the last appearing posthumously in 1972. The stories are characterized by their brevity – some are less than a page long – and by their dramatic concision.
Poetry Classics: The Tiger, By William Blake
This poem contemplates a question arising from the idea of creation by an intelligent creator. The question is this: If there is a loving, compassionate God or gods who created human beings and whose great powers exceed the comprehension of human beings, as many major religions hold, then why would such a powerful being allow evil into the world
Poetry Classics: Marching Streets, By F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American writer, whose works illustrate the Jazz Age. While he achieved limited success in his lifetime, he is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Poetry Classics: Advice To A Son, By Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway wrote Advice to a Son right after the Roaring Twenties in the early 1930's. This poem shows the many things that Hemingway had learned after fleeing to Paris from America after the Great War. Hemingway in his early thirties was writing to his son through poetry about the harsh reality of life.
Poetry Classics: Ode On A Grecian Urn, By John Keats
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published anonymously in the January 1820, Number 15, issue of the magazine Annals of the Fine Arts
Short Story Classics: The Story Of An Hour, By Kate Chopin
"The Story of an Hour," is a short story written by Kate Chopin on April 19, 1894. It was originally published in Vogue on December 6, 1894, as "The Dream of an Hour". It was later reprinted in St. Louis Life on January 5, 1895, as "The Story of an Hour". The title of the short story refers to the time elapsed between the moments at which the protagonist, Louise Mallard, hears that her husband is dead, and when she discovers that he is alive after all. "The Story of an Hour" was controversial by American standards of the 1890s because it features a female protagonist who feels liberated by the news of her husband's death. In Unveiling Kate Chopin, Emily Toth argues that Chopin "had to have her heroine die" in order to make the story publishable". (The "heroine" dies when she sees her husband alive after he was thought to be dead.
Poetry Classics: The Road Not Taken, By Robert Frost
Frost's biographer Lawrance Thompson suggests that the poem's narrator is "one who habitually wastes energy in regretting any choice made: belatedly but wistfully he sighs over the attractive alternative rejected". Thompson also says that when introducing the poem in readings, Frost would say that the speaker was based on his friend Edward Thomas. In Frost's words, Thomas was "a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other"
Short Story Classics: Harrison Bergeron, By Kurt Vonnegut
"Harrison Bergeron" is a satirical and dystopian science-fiction short story written by Kurt Vonnegut and first published in October 1961. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the story was republished in the author's Welcome to the Monkey House collection in 1968.
Poetry Classics: Caedmon’s Hymn
The so-called Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) embeds this Anglo-Saxon hymn and the legend of its creation within his Latin text, An Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a book that describes the spread of Christianity in England. The hymn itself was composed in the mid- or late-7th century and so is the earliest surviving Old English poem.
Poetry Classics: Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, By Robert Frost
A beloved and famous classic poem by Robert Frost.
All Summer In A Day, By Ray Bradbury
A group of schoolchildren live on Venus where the Sun is visible for only two hours every seven years.
Poetry Classics: Opportunity, By John James Ingalls
Opportunity, it is famously said, knocks only once. John James Ingalls, a U.S. Senator from Kansas, penned an ode to this simple but profound principle in the mid-19th century, and it was said to have become Theodore Roosevelt’s very favorite poem.
Poetry Classics: Ode 1.11, By Horace
Made famous by Robin Williams’ inspiring literature teacher in the film Dead Poets Society, Horace’s Ode 1.11 contains one of the most quoted Latin phrases — Carpe diem, or “Seize the day!”
Short Story Classics: Hills Like White Elephants, By Ernest Hemingway
This short story from Hemingway’s 1927 collection Men Without Women takes place in Spain’s Ebro Valley, and concerns two characters on the verge of a life-changing decision – although they are having trouble talking about it.
