Collection
Poems about Loneliness and Solitude
Poetry offers solace for the lonely and a positive perspective on being alone.
BY The Editors
In the book Journal of a Solitude, the poet May Sarton once wrote that “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” Poetry’s relationship to solitude is paradoxical: while many poets savor the isolation needed to write their best work, the finished product will ideally create connection, or even community.
Celebrating Solitude
Childhood’s Retreat
Robert Duncan
The Solitude of Night
Li Bai
Ode on Solitude
Alexander Pope
The Sound of One Fork
Minnie Bruce Pratt
American Solitude
Grace Schulman
Sanctuary
Jean Valentine
Danse Russe
William Carlos Williams
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth
Wallowing In Loneliness
The Glass Essay
Anne Carson
- T. S. Eliot
Proportion Surviving
Renee Gladman
Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden
- Michael Hofmann
[He is pruning the privet]
Joanne Kyger
Flood: Years of Solitude
Dionisio D. Martínez
“Alone”
Edgar Allan Poe
Solitude
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Being Alone In A Crowd
- Greg Sellers
- Geoffrey Brock
On Broadway
Claude McKay