How to Search for Poetry

All Searches are not case sensitive. A search for "usa" will match "Usa", "USA", and "usA".

If you're looking for a Type of poetry, such as love poems or poems about depression, you may get better results by browsing through the long list of poetry categories in our Poetry Map.

The asterisk (wildcard) is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph. The asterisk can only be used for searching words with an "All Words" or "Any Words" search.

Common words, like "to" or "be" are ignored. So if someone plagiarized Shakespeare, you'd never be able to find "to be or not to be". This applies to an "All Words" or "Any Words" search.

When choosing "All Words (implied and)", placing a minus sign in front of a word will turn the AND into an AND NOT. For example entering "bird -cage", will return poems that contain the word "bird" but NOT the word "cage".

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