Literary criticism on specific poems

A student I met during a course-related lecture yesterday for a section of ENG 2150 was having trouble findng criticism on a poem by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) that the student claimed was titled "My Love Is Like to Ice." He said a librarian had already worked with him at the desk for a while and was unable to find any criticism.

I just finished doing some nosing around and thought I'd share what I learned, which I hope is instructive not just for this one particular poem but as a general approach when searching for criticism of a single poem. First, I found that the proper title of the poem is actually "Sonnet 30," although informally the poem is often known as "My Love Is Like to Ice," which happens to be the start of the first line "My love is like to ice, and I to fire:." It is worth knowing that it is common for poems (especially numbered sonnets) to be known by the first line; scholars, though, will typically refer to such poems by their official or real titles. I also discovered that the poem was published in Spenser's lifetime in a collection known as Amoretti.

It is the official title of the poem (or the title of the book-length collection where the poem first appeared) that you will want to use as part of your search, not the informal title of the poem. I suggested in an email to the student that he search for articles in Literature Resource Center and Academic Search Premier with this query:

SPENSER AND (AMORETTI OR SONNET 30)

For criticism in books, I recommended a slightly different query in the catalog:

SPENSER EDMUND AND CRITICISM

I directed him to look through the tables of contents and the indexes in those books for references to "Amoretti" or "Sonnet 30."