Archive FAQ

Yes! Please share poems via social media, linking to our site, or printing poems for personal use. Note that our poems may be protected by copyright law and you are responsible for ascertaining fair use of our content.

The Poetry Foundation does not own the rights to most poems on our site. Please consult with the rightsholder to obtain permission to reprint any poems found in our archive.

A rightsholder is the person or organization that owns the copyright on intellectual property such as books, films, photographs, and poems. Rightsholders decide who can use their property and how they can use it. Publishers hold the rights to most poems, but sometimes other agencies or estates (such as a deceased poet’s family) hold rights; the poet is not always the righstholder. The Poetry Foundation credits publishers under each poem when available. Poets with questions about rights to their work must consult with their publisher.

According to the US Copyright Office, “copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression.” Copyright grants certain legal protections to the creator of an original creative work. Copyright also allows creators to sell their rights to others, who then become rightsholders themselves.

The Poetry Foundation acquires permission to reprint poems on our site. For a variety of reasons, we are not able to obtain permissions for every published poem. People work the archive, meaning poems expire and licenses are renewed based on human discretion. If we are missing a poem you expected to see, please read more in our suggestions FAQ on this page.

We reprint selected previously published work based on a variety of factors. Please contact us through the general information form with your suggestion and it will be routed to the digital archive editor. Suggestions will be read as time allows, and you will not receive a response to your suggestion unless the editor requires more information.

We are always looking to include more poets in the archive. Please contact us through the general information form and your suggestion will be routed to the digital archive editor, who evaluates suggestions as time allows.

Poems exist in many iterations and forms that change from publication to publication. For example, Walt Whitman re-published Leaves of Grass in six different print editions during his lifetime with one “deathbed edition” released after his death, making every version of those poems different. You can read more about poem versioning in this blog post. The Poetry Foundation does not intentionally modify poems, and we reproduce the text and style of the publication as cited to the best of our ability. Please verify the poem’s text by consulting a print or digital copy of the publication from which our version is copied before suggesting a correction; you can find the poem’s source listed at the bottom of the poem’s page. Please submit confirmed corrections through our contact form, and we will work to make the correction as soon as possible.

Please submit your idea for new archive content through Submittable. Suggestions will be routed to the digital archivist. We encourage you to review our existing collections, poem guides, and poem samplers.

The Poetry Foundation is unable to respond to individual research questions, including requests for help with citations. Please consult our web resources, including collections and articles, for information that may help answer your question. Ask your local librarian and consult other researched and verifiable online resources, such as poets.org, for further information.

You can read about the history of the magazine on our website. To read primary sources from the archives of Poetry magazine, please visit the University of Chicago Special Collections and Indiana University Lilly Library.

Poets may submit their author biography for review. Do not submit more than once per year, including revision requests. Please submit your request via this form and note the following guidelines that help us manage an equitable and consistent process:

• We are unable to accept submissions or revision requests more than once per year.
• Your bio will be reviewed in the order received based on the capacity of our editors.
• All biographies are edited for house style and fact-checked to maintain editorial standards. We are unable to include self-publications or forthcoming materials in biographies.
• Submission is not a guarantee of publication.

Works in the digital archive are previously published and we do not own the rights to these works; please see our permissions FAQ on this page. If you are a poet and would like to recommend previously published work for archive acquisition, you or your publisher are welcome to mail a copy of your work to the Poetry Foundation for review. Poetry magazine has open submission periods throughout the year; all poems that appear in the magazine also appear in the digital archive. Find instructions for submitting your poems to the magazine here.

Please note that Harriet Books does not accept unsolicited review copies. Featured bloggers and reviewers for Harriet Books are hired via open calls and solicitation. If you would like to submit a book for consideration or pitch an essay for the website, please see the Poetry magazine Submittable page.

Please submit pitches to write for the archive through the Poetry magazine Submittable page. We encourage you to review our existing collections, poem guides, and poem samplers before pitching.

Please visit our Grants FAQ for information on funding from the Poetry Foundation.