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As a student and young reader, I am often inundated with syllabi and must-read lists that beat me over the head with the “essentials. ” One can only be told to read Twain, Austen, Faulkner, Dickens, and Hemingway so many times before one itches to rebel

The settings of Shakespeare’s thirty-seven plays cast a wide net across Europe. The majority are set outside of England, providing his audiences with intriguing, foreign lands and allowing for flexibility in expressing social and political commentary

Metaphor is arguably the most ubiquitous and layered of literary devices. Expressing images, emotions, actions, experiences, and nuances through direct and indirect comparisons, metaphors enrich a text and reveal the deeper significance of what is being described

Poetry selections in high school are too often limited to a hallowed few—Shakespeare and Petrarch, Whitman and Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, and perhaps Billy Collins—if poetry is included at all. While these canonized favorites can enhance any unit of study, they can leave students feeling like poetry is a thing of the past, which couldn’t be further from the truth! A chorus of poets working, writing, and publishing today are taking on the specifics of racial and gender equality and addressing the universal questions poetry is particularly well suited for: How do we preserve and share the sweetness of life? How do we make meaning of its bitterness? Let’s take a look at five contemporary poets who can enrich and diversify your curriculum: Who she is: Tracy K