Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” first published in The Crisis in June 1921, is one of the most famous and foundational poems of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote the brief poem in 1920 while crossing the Mississip…
Bliss Carman’s “Nancibel,” published in 1895, is a shimmering piece of lyrical, late-Romantic poetry. It captures a moment of intense, fleeting natural beauty inextricably linked to human memory and presence. While Carman—one…
Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” first published in 1913, is a cornerstone of literary Modernism and the ultimate example of the Imagist movement. Clocking in at a mere fourteen words, it is a perfect example of why this p…