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Odysseus should have checked out How to Return Home from War for Dummies. Step One: Do not mess with the son of a god. Actually, no need to read on...

On his ten-year journey home from the Trojan War, Odysseus runs into everything from sirens to sea monsters to seductresses. Such is life when you...

This video defines sonnets, a favorite of William Shakespeare. What are the different types of sonnet? How do you identify different kinds of sonne...

And you thought a nymph was a naturally lovely woodland creature. To be fair, so did we. But boy did Jonathan Swift prove us wrong.

The first real celebrity was a poet? Guess our standards have changed.

Sure, Edgar Allan Poe was dark and moody and filled with teenage angst, but what else does he have in common with the Twilight series?

It can never hurt to have a few spare duchesses lying around the house.

Hanging your wife's portrait above your fireplace? Romantic. Hanging it up after you've killed her? Not so much.

It's so nice when a poem is straight with you right from the get-go, isn't it? If more poems were this considerate, "The Road Not Taken" might have...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" is like one long drug trip. Don't try this at home.

Ode on a Californian Shmoop.

Indecision may or may not be this man's biggest problem. All he can do is go left or right. It's not that big of a deal...or is it?

In Poe's raven's defense, he probably only knew that one word...

Why would Yehuda Amichai write an entire book on the diameter of a bomb and the diameter of its range? Is he trying to convey a message? Is his boo...

"The Love Song of Shmoop" is next.

Imagine if dreams really could come true. This is the question that Langston Hughes ponders in his poem "Dream Deferred."

Why not just buy a new wall? We're sure Mr. Frost would be okay with it.

"Nothing cared I that time would take me": the famous words of Dylan Thomas in his poem "Fern Hill." In this poem, the speaker fights age and aims...

"Girl," by Jamaica Kincaid, is a poem—er, a story... er... what is this thing? Either way, it's about a mother's advice to her daughter. And noth...