Law & Poetry

Established by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry which takes place every April. It’s a perfect time to revisit a poem that is meaningful to you, learn a new one, or even write one of your own!

What is poetry? Poetry is defined as, “the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.” (Source: Poetry Definition, Dictionary.com)

Do you remember the first poem that made an impression on you? For me, it was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 43. Poems have many themes, including legal. A short poem by the American poet Walt Whitman entitled Thought is intriguing:

Source: The Walt Whitman Archive. Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price eds. (last visited April 24, 2012). Walt Whitman, Thought, in Leaves of Grass, By the Roadside 217, available at http://www.whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/140.

 

For more on law and poetry, one book in the Gallagher Law Library you may want to browse is Poetry of the Law: From Chaucer to the Present (David Kader & Michael Stanford eds., 2010), a selective anthology of 100 poems about the law from the 1300’s to contemporary times.

Respectfully Quoted:A Dictionary of Quotations Requested from the Congressional Research Service (Suzy Platt ed., 1989) also includes poetry selections. This book is arranged by subject, and includes an alphabetical index of keywords and authors.

To find other books on poetry, search the Gallagher Law Library catalog by the following subjects:
 
English poetry
American Poetry
Law -- Poetry
Lawyers -- Poetry
Judges -- Poetry
Trials -- Poetry
Punishment -- Poetry