The archive holds more than a hundred thousand poems. A few words are usually enough to find the line you are after; when they are not, there are ways to narrow the search.
What does search look at?
A poem search covers the title, the lines, the poet’s name, the tags and the title and text of published translations. A match in the title ranks above a match only in the lines, so typing the poem’s name is the shortest route.
Only published content appears in search. Your own drafts and records awaiting approval stay in your member panel and do not show up in results.
Typos and diacritics
You need not type the accented letters: searching “gul siir” finds “Gül Şiir”. Small typos are tolerated too — one wrong letter will not lose the result. The same holds for the other alphabets.
Three ways to narrow a search
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Quotes: keep the words together
"gül şiir" - Words in quotes are searched exactly in that order, side by side. If you remember a line, this is the sharpest route.
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Minus: leave this word out
gül -diken - Poems containing a word prefixed with a minus sign drop out of the results.
- The “match all words” checkbox
- Search is broad by default: if no poem carries all of your words, it drops the last ones and brings near matches too. Tick the box in the advanced search panel to list only poems that carry every word.
Filters
The “Advanced search” panel in the poem list narrows a search by tag, minimum rating and the years a poem was written. On a poet’s page the same filters apply only to that poet’s work.
Filters travel in the address: you can share a result as it stands or bookmark it.
Sorting
When you search, the list is ordered by match strength and the closest result sits at the top. If you pick another order (newest, most read, highest rated), the search leaves that order alone.
Content language
Search is limited to the languages you chose to read. If a poem has a published translation in another language, it can be found by searching in that language too. You can change the preference from the language menu in the footer.
If you can’t find it
- Try fewer words: two words usually work better than five.
- Add the poet’s name: it is one of the searched fields.
- Instead of the title, search a line you remember inside quotes.
- Widen the content-language filter: the poem may be in a language you did not select.
If you think a poem is missing from the archive, you can write to us.
A search shows at most 1.000 results. More than that does not help; if what you want is not in the list, narrowing the search is the faster way to it.