As resolutely canonical as they seem to us now, the “Holy Sonnets” of John Donne (1572–1631) flicker with some uncertainty in the imaginary museum hall of English literature. We think we know them.

Though almost all of Emily Dickinson’s famous poems, from the morbid “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” to the uplifting “‘Hope’ Is the Thing With Feathers,” were published after her death, she’s ...

Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it. In his native Ireland, he’s known as “Famous Seamus,” ...