I’ve written two different blog posts with my favorite poems and poem lessons for AP Lit. But I wanted to create a database of strong poem suggestions for new and veteran AP Lit teachers. In this list, I combed through suggested poems from the AP Lit Facebook group as well as poem suggestions from trusted colleagues and online friends. At the bottom, I also recommend some online poetry resources that can help AP Lit teachers who want to infuse new poems in their classes. I hope you find it helpful!
Poems marked with an asterisk (*) denote works that have been selected for an AP English Literature free response question on a past exam. You can find the master list here, so I haven’t linked them separately.
Titles marked with a ^ denote a collection of poetry rather than a single poem.
Poems that are bolded denote a personal favorite in my own classroom.
Ancient/Middle Age Poems (Before 1500)
The Odyssey (excerpted) by Homer*
Renaissance Poetry (1400s-1600s)
“For That He Looked Not Upon Her” by George Gascoigne*
“Thou Blind Man’s Mark” by Sir Philip Sidney*
Sonnet 130 (My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun) by William Shakespeare
“One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand” by Edmund Spenser
“Whoso List to Hunt” by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Enlightenment & Restoration (1600s-1785)
“The Author to Her Book” by Anne Bradstreet*
“The Broken Heart” by John Donne*
“Holy Sonnets: If poisonous minerals, and if that tree” by John Donne
“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne
“To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age” by Samuel Johnson*
“To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell
“London’s Summer Morning” by Mary Robinson*
Romantic Poetry (1785-1830s)
“The Chimney Sweeper” (two poems of the same name) by William Blake*
“My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning
“Porphyria’s Lover” by Robert Browning
“On Summer” by George Moses Horton*
“Bright Star” by John Keats*
“When I Have Fears” by John Keats
“Ode to the West Wind” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
“Crossing the Bar” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Tears, Idle Tears” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“There Was a Boy” by William Wordsworth*
“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
“London, 1802” by William Wordsworth*
“The World is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth
Victorian Poetry (1837-1901)
“Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
“EΡΩΣ” by Robert Bridges*
“Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant
“Autumn” by Alice Cary*
“The Barren Moor” by William Ellery Channing*
“It was not Death, for I stood up” by Emily Dickinson
“The Last Night That She Lived” by Emily Dickinson*
“We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson*
“Douglass” by Paul Laurence Dunbar*
“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar
“The Convergence of the Twain” by Thomas Hardy*
“Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
“To an Athlete Dying Young” by A. E. Housman
“When I Was One and Twenty” by A. E. Housman
“The Cross of Snow” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Mezzo Cammin” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow*
“Modern Love I: By This He Knew She Wept” by George Meredith*
“To Helen” by Edgar Allan Poe*
“The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe
“To a Star Seen at Twilight” by John Rollin Ridge*
“Remember” by Christina Rossetti*
“A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman
“When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman
Modern Poetry (1900-1945)
“Lot’s Wife” by Anna Akhmatova
“Five Flights Up” by Elizabeth Bishop*
“One Art” by Elizabeth Bishop*
“Forgive My Guilt” by Robert P. Tristram Coffin
“[in Just-]” by E. E. Cummings
“Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost*
“Choose Something Like a Star” by Robert Frost*
“The Most of It” By Robert Frost*
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
“Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes
“The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes
“Anthem to a Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen
“Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom
“Elegy for Jane” by Theodore Roethke*
“My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke
“Night Journey” by Theodore Roethke
Postmodern Poetry (1945-2000)
“The Man With the Saxophone” by Ai*
“On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries” by Julia Alvarez*
“Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou
“Siren Song” by Margaret Atwood
“Clocks and Lovers” by W. H. Auden*
“If I Could Tell You” by W. H. Auden*
“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden
“The Unknown Citizen” by W. H. Auden*
“I Am Offering This Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca
“It’s a Woman’s World” by Eavan Boland*
“Ogun” Edward Kamau Brathwaite*
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks
“The History Teacher” by Billy Collins*
“Introduction to Poetry” by Billy Collins
“Golden Retrievals” by Mark Doty*
“The Groundhog” by Richard Eberhart*
“Icarus” by Edward Field*
“The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché
“For Jane Meyers” by Louise Gluck*
“Retreating Light” by Louise Gluck
“My Son, My Executioner” by Donald Hall
“Blackberry-Picking” by Seamus Heaney*
“Hawk Roosting” by Ted Hughes*
“To Paint a Water Lily” by Ted Hughes*
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell
“Prologue: Downstream” by Thomas Kinsella*
“Flirting with Poetry” by Ron Koertge
“Abandoned Farmhouse” by Ted Kooser
“Here” by Philip Larkin*
“Poetry of Departures” by Philip Larkin*
“A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde
“Monologue for Saint Louis” by Colleen McElroy
“The Black Walnut Tree” by Mary Oliver*
“Crossing the Swamp” by Mary Oliver*
“The Landlady” by P. K. Page*
“For the young who want to” by Marge Piercy
“The Moon and the Yew Tree” by Sylvia Plath
“Sow” by Sylvia Plath*
“The Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall
“Diving into the Wreck” by Adrienne Rich
“Living in Sin” by Adrienne Rich
“Storm Warnings” by Adrienne Rich*
“A House Called Tomorrow” by Alberto Rios
“Five A. M.” by William Stafford*
“Eros” by Anne Stevenson*
“The Centaur” by May Swenson*
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas
“The Great Scarf of Birds” by John Updike*
“XIV” by Derek Walcott*
“The Century Quilt” by Marilyn Nelson Waniek*
“Evening Hawk” by Robert Penn Warren*
“Did I Miss Anything?” by Tom Wayman
“A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur*
“The Death of a Toad” by Richard Wilbur*
“The Juggler” by Richard Wilbur*
“Museum Piece” by Richard Wilbur
“The Writer” by Richard Wilbur
“Dance Russe” by William Carlos Williams
“Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams*
Contemporary Poems (2000-present)
“For the Dogs Who Barked at Me on the Sidewalks in Connecticut” by Hanif Abdurraqib
“It Is Maybe Time to Admit That Michael Jordan Definitely Pushed Off” by Hanif Abdurraqib
“If They Should Come For Us” by Fatimah Asghar
“Microaggression Bingo” by Fatimah Asghar
“This Side Up” by Emanuelee Bean
“Shaving” by Richard Blanco*
“Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown
“mulberry fields” by Lucille Clifton
“Two Guitars” by Victor Hernandez Cruz*
“For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano
“The Myth of Music” by Rachel M. Harper*
“We Lived Happily During the War” by Ilya Kaminsky
“The Places We Are Not” by Sarah Kay
“Do not trust the eraser” by Rosamond S. King
“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee
“A Story” by Li-Young Lee*
“There Are Birds Here” by Jamaal May
“Baked Goods” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“In Praise of My Manicure” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
“Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“My Father and the Fig Tree” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Citizen Illegal by José Olivarez^
“The End of August” by Margaret Ray
“Plants” by Olive Senior*
“Dinosaurs in the Hood” by Danez Smith
Counting Descent by Clint Smith^
“There is a Lake Here” by Clint Smith
“Meteor Shower” by Clint Smith
Poetry Resources for AP Lit Teachers
For teachers looking for more suggestions for poems to teach and resources to help teach those poems, bookmark these websites for the future!
Teach Living Poets
Melissa Smith’s work with Teach Living Poets is extraordinary. In just a few years, she’s taken a hashtag on Twitter to be a website, a book, and a movement among poets and teachers alike. Check out her website and her book for the newest selections in contemporary poetry.
LMS Voice Curriculum
Brian Hannon has invested countless hours to creating free poetry resources for popular and emerging poets. This curriculum offers individual lessons created around poets and poetry, all free of use!
Lit & More Blog
In case you didn’t know, there are over 20 blog posts devoted to teaching poetry in AP English Lit and other ELA classes. Many include free ideas, lessons, and resources to help you succeed!
Ms Effie’s Blog
Many new AP Lit teachers, including myself, got their first footing in the course with Ms. Effie’s blog. Although now retired, Sandra Effinger still updates her website with free resources for AP Lit teachers.
Mirror by Sylvia Plath