Poetry Resources Available Through TexShare Databases

Whether you are a student looking for a complete listing of poems by an author or an educator seeking quick biographical profiles on certain poets for a classroom lesson on Naturalism, TexShare has the tools to guide your search. Take full advantage of the following resources in order to optimize your capabilities for locating the right information on poets and poetry of the twentieth century.

What are the databases that provide information about poetry?

Twentieth-Century American Poetry and Twentieth-Century English Poetry are the two poetry databases that are freely available through TexShare. These databases are structured in the same format in that they contain the same features and search capabilities. According to their scope, they both contain full-text access to over thousands of poems and brief biographical entries on poets.

What is the easiest way to find poems by a specific poet as well as biographical and literary profile information?

For either database, click on Complete Contents listed on the left-hand menu to access an alphabetical listing of all the poets featured in that database with links to their biographical information and complete works as well as bibliographic details. By simple clicking on the author’s name, you will be directed to a quick summary of that author’s life and literary period classification with links to full-text files of the author’s works as well as to a biographical record derived from outside sources; these records may include contact information for living poets.

When I try to look up the poems written by E.E. Cummings, a screen appears with a Download Size Warning. Why is this?

When attempting to access the works of some more prolific authors (like E.E. Cummings) by going to the author list in Complete Contents, you must keep in mind that the entry beneath their name is an electronic file of their complete works which corresponds to a print version and is also copyrighted. You have to download this on your computer, which may be time-consuming and inefficient; instead, you could access records of their primary (or most well-known) poems with full-text that is available as a list of results on the database itself. Click on the Search link on the homepage and enter the author’s name in the “Poet(s)” search field; this will give you a list of results by individual poem that are selected works from the overall source of the complete volume.

What other helpful features are available for these databases?

The Help link gives you a concise overview of the auxiliary features available, such as the Site Map and Information Centre that have corresponding links.

This page was written by Derek Nájera in Spring 2006.
This page was revised by Kyla Kothman in Spring 2007.
INF 382S: Library Instruction and Information Literacy, taught by Dr. Loriene Roy
School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin