| By Gale Staff |
For high school students questioning who they are and where they belong, poetry offers something extraordinary: a window into shared humanity, across time and culture.
As teenagers develop their sense of self, their experiences might feel uniquely intense, or even isolating. It’s important for them to understand that they aren’t alone—that their feelings are not only valid, but they have been shared by people from around the world for centuries, across differences of gender expression or sexual orientation, race, or national background.
For this year’s World Poetry Day on March 21, we have featured a selection of poets from the past and present. A diverse canon of poetic voices ensures that students can engage with works that reflect their backgrounds while introducing perspectives that connect them to the broader human experience.
Bringing this diversity into the classroom can be challenging without additional support to provide the cultural and historical context behind the poems. Gale In Context: Literature meets this need with a collection of curriculum-aligned resources—curated biographies, critical analyses, summaries, recorded readings, and more—all accessible in a single, intuitive platform.
Sappho
“Someone will remember us,” Sappho (625–570 BCE) wrote, “even in another time.”
Over two millennia later, the words of this prophetic Greek poet born on the island of Lesbos have proven true. In a time when stories about gods and warriors on their heroes’ journeys garnered popular appeal, Sappho dared to be delicate, composing lyric poetry meant to be sung with lyre accompaniments. Though much of her work has been lost, what remains on a few bits of preserved papyri scraps captures the ephemerality of love—both the tenderness of shared moments and the inevitable pain of parting, as expressed in Fragment 19:
“And I answered: ‘Farewell, go and remember me. / You know how we cared for you. / If not, I would remind you / . . . of our wonderful times. / For by my side you put on / many wreaths of roses / and garlands of flowers / around your soft neck.’”
These lines evoke rituals of tenderness, the adornment of wreaths and garlands underscoring the intimacy of feminine connection. Through this natural imagery, Sappho—unbound by gender or convention—celebrates the universality of love and its transcendence of time, culture, and identity. To love and to be loved, she reminds us, is an essential part of being human, even when it comes with the ache of remembering what is gone.
Wislawa Szymborska
Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) lived through some of the most turbulent times of the 20th century. She came of age during World War II, when Nazi occupation ravaged her country, only to experience the rigidity of Soviet control in the postwar years. Under these oppressive regimes, she developed a voice that resisted grand proclamations in favor of intimate observations that are ironically complex in their seeming simplicity.
In “Possibilities,” she writes:
“I prefer movies. / I prefer cats. / I prefer the oaks along the Warta. / I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. / I prefer myself liking people / to myself loving mankind. / I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. / I prefer the color green. / I prefer not to maintain / that reason is to blame for everything.”
Through these simple declarations, Szymborska celebrates the power of choice, championing individuality over abstract ideals. At the poem’s close, she adds, “I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility / that existence has its own reason for being,” suggesting that simply being who you are, without explanation or justification, is enough. It’s a powerful message for anyone struggling to find their place in the world and a reminder that our choices—the big ones that define our values and the small ones that make us unique—contribute equally to who we are.
Bei Dao
At the dawn of Communist rule in China, the Cultural Revolution caused sweeping ideological upheaval, demanding absolute conformity to Mao Zedong’s doctrines. Amongst these doctrines was Zedong’s conscription of art and literature to serve the state by glorifying the Communist Party.
Bei Dao (b. 1949) resisted this cultural control and became a co-founder of the Misty Poets movement, a group that challenged the expectation that creative works reinforce political orthodoxy. They adopted quiet defiance, artfully masking subtle critiques of authoritarianism behind oblique imagery and layered meanings.
His most famous poem, “The Answer,” was used as an underground political anthem during the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations, leading to his exile from mainland China in 1989. He first relocated to Sweden, then spent time in Denmark, France, and Germany before settling in the United States, where he still lives today.
His poem states:
“Let me tell you, world,/ I—do—not—believe!/ If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,/ Count me as number thousand and one./ I don’t believe the sky is blue;/ I don’t believe in thunder’s echoes;/ I don’t believe that dreams are false;/ I don’t believe that death has no revenge.”
Dao’s words were considered treasonous and radical in a society where the state dictated truth. It was dangerous to refuse imposed narratives and instead insist on the individual’s right to question, imagine, and create.
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo (b. 1951) of Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a Muscogee (Creek) Nation member and the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate. Growing up in a world where Native voices were often marginalized, she turned to poetry to share lessons from her tribe, particularly emphasizing the interconnectedness of all living things.
As such, much of Harjo’s poetry seeks to guide us back to the fundamental relationships that sustain life. She urges for a shift in how humans see ourselves: not as conquerors of the land but as caretakers—not above the natural world, but as part of it.
“Remember the earth whose skin you are:/ red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth/ brown earth, we are earth./ Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,/ listen to them.”
This excerpt from “Remember” speaks to a sacred exchange between humans and the natural world—a relationship often forgotten in the rush of modern life. Harjo’s words call for us to reawaken our sense of responsibility to what sustains us, reminding us that in honoring the Earth and its histories, we honor our own humanity.
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Once described to Mary Church Terrel by a misty-eyed Frederick Douglass as “very young, but . . . no doubt that he is a poet,” Ohioan Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first black poets to gain national recognition. Dunbar’s work was primarily inspired by his parents’ stories of plantation life and their experiences as enslaved persons in Kentucky.
While some of Dunbar’s works were criticized for perpetuating stereotypes and writing to appeal to white audiences, his more introspective pieces like “We Wear the Mask” reveal keen observations about the racial dynamics of post-Reconstruction America.
“We wear the mask that grins and lies,/ It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—/ This debt we pay to human guile;/ With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,/ And a mouth with myriad subtleties.”
This reflection on the duality of the human experience is often echoed throughout Dunbar’s body of work, specifically the quiet exhaustion of living in a way that others expect while longing for the freedom of a more authentic existence. For anyone who has ever felt that fitting in comes at a tremendous personal cost, Dunbar’s poetry compels readers to remember that while the mask can be a shield, it also isolates us from ourselves and others.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952) grew up hearing stories of her father’s birthplace, which he was forced to leave following the 1948 Nakba when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced.
In “My Father and the Fig Tree,” she recalls his laments for the fruits of his native land:
“I’m talking about a fig straight from the earth – / gift of Allah! – on a branch so heavy/ it touches the ground. / I’m talking about picking the largest, fattest, / sweetest fig / in the world and putting it in my mouth./ (Here he’d stop and close his eyes.)”
Nye’s father’s yearning for his homeland—made tangible in the form of a fig tree—became a legacy she inherited. It was both a source of pride and a symbol of her otherness as Nye struggled with the forces of cultural assimilation. This tension lies at the heart of her poetry, which is a powerful meditation on what it means to belong to many places and none.
Gale In Context: Literature Facilitates Meaningful Interactions With Diverse Poetic Voices
Poetry as an art form and as a cultural artifact helps us understand ourselves and others, connecting readers to diverse perspectives, shared struggles, and moments of meaning that transcend time and place.
Gale In Context: Literature bridges the gap between the pedagogical need for structured, grade-appropriate lessons on concepts like figurative language and poetry terms, and the contextual resources that give poetry meaning, such as literary criticism, primary sources from the period when it was written, and discussion prompts.
Reach out to our team for a walkthrough of how Gale In Context: Literature can engage your students with diverse voices.