National Poetry Month is over for another year, but the Web makes it easy to bring poetry into your life all year long.
The sponsor of Poetry Month, The Academy of American Poets has a searchable database of poems and poets. There is also an almanac with a year's worth of activities to encourage you to make poetry a part of your life.
Poetry 180 is a Library of Congress project started by former Poet Laureate Billy Collins. The goal is to offer a poem for each of the 180 days of a typical school year. The poems are selected with high school students in mind, and thus are usually accessible to the casual or new reader of poetry. Start with the first poem in the series, Collins's own "Introduction to Poetry." Poetry Daily offers a contemporary poem every day, as well as poetry news a reviews. A weekly e-mail newsletter is also available.
Garrison Keillor's "The Writers Almanac" is a short daily feature available to public radio stations. Each installment includes a "today in history" segment focused on events and people in the arts and letters, as well as a daily poem. It is also available via RealAudio and daily e-mail subscription on the web site.
All three of the preceding sites, incidentally, have spawned poetry books of some of the poems they featured.
If you've been inspired to try writing poetry, but aren't sure where to start, visit one of the following sites.
Ariadne's Web has many writing exercises, as well as explanations of several popular poetry forms.
Sol-Magazine also has an extensive list of poetry forms.
This Poetry Form Finder is geared toward kids, but no one will tell if you use it yourself.
The Piker Press moderates all comments.
Click here for the commenting policy.