The Learning Lab

Spotlight on the Poetry Foundation's Learning Lab--an excellent source of reference for students of poetry.

The Learning Lab takes as a point of departure something Robert Frost once wrote about poetry: "It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." The Lab encourages students to attend to individual poems with a focus that's rare on the internet--and at the same time provides instructors with a unique range of suplementary material useful in teaching poetry.

Below is a list of Poetry Out Loud poems that the Lab focuses on as core learning poems. Some of these core poems are annotated and come with guides for understanding, discussion questions and writing ideas.  

It was not Death, for I stood up by Emily Dickinson

kitchenette building by Gwendolyn Brooks

La Belle Dame sans Merci by John Keats

Lunar Baedeker by Mina Loy

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow by Robert Duncan

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Psalm by George Oppen

Skunk Hour by Robert Lowell

The Sun Rising by John Donne

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

To Autumn by John Keats

To My Dear and Loving Husband by Anne Bradstreet

The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins