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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...

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.

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.

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?

"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...

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.

"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...

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.

Mariners back in the day sure knew how to bust a rime.

Pious Aeneas goes from minor character in the Trojan War to founder of Rome, the city that conquered the world, meetin' ladies and experiencing major duty-induced guilt trips along the way. We wonder what Virgil could have done for Robin, Batman's perpetual sidekick...

Pious Aeneas strikes again. This time, with more destiny and hand-to-hand combat! (Of course, since we're talking about Aeneas, he's still harping about that whole duty thing.)

So that's why Brad Pitt looks so fit in Troy! (The movie, not the city-state.) He's related to the gods, just like Achilles was. We always knew knew it was our lame mortal genes and not our refusal to hit the gym that was preventing us from building muscles like that.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what site is the fairest of them all? What? IntelligenceHut.com? Are you sure? Ugh, we want a refund.

You'll never guess what this Old English poem is about. Wait, what? You think it's about some dude who wanders around a lot? Hey, nice guess! Have you read it before?

This video summarizes Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven—in rhyme. This first-person poem follows the narrator’s descent into madness as he talks to a raven. That’s right, the raven talks back to him, increasing his distress by saying “nevermore.” And what ever happened to Lenore? Maybe if she were still around, the narrator wouldn’t have had to talk to a raven.

This video explains how to scan and diagram a poem or other work of literature for meter and line length and identifies the metrical description of lines from Richard III and The Song of Hiawatha. What are the different names for the patterns in language? Why should we care about scanning poetry? What’s Iambic Pentameter, anyway?