Celebrate National Poetry Month, an annual observance started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Read some poetry, write some, and give poems away (especially on April 30th, aka Poem In Your Pocket Day).
Where, oh where, can one find poetry?!
- Poets.org (Academy of American Poets web site)
- The Library of Congress’s Poetry page
- The Poetry Foundation‘s web site.
- Poems Out Loud: Celebrating National Poetry Month with Robert Plinsky (former Poet Laureate)
Search the Library Catalog for your favorite poet, or for collections of poetry. A subject keyword search for poetry collections would find titles such as Poet’s choice: poems for everyday life (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN1016 .H37 1998), A book of luminous things: an international anthology of poetry (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN6101 .B585 1996), and Beneath the wide wide heaven: poetry of the environment, from antiquity to the present (3rd-floor Main Collection, PN6110.N2 B4 1991).
A catalog search for “children’s poetry” would find titles such as Animal crackers: a delectable collection of pictures, poems, and lullabies for the very young (2nd-floor Oversize Easy Books, E Ani) and Hip hop speaks to children: a celebration of poetry with a beat (2nd-floor Juvenile Non-Fiction, 811.008 Hip). You can use the Children’s Literature Comprehensive Database to find titles, and then search for them in the Library Catalog to see if they are available at UWW. For example, on the right side you can limit to “Genre” poetry and then select a grade level. I tried it with grade 5 and found among the titles listed A world of wonders : geographic travels in verse and rhyme, which is available here (2nd-floor Oversize Juvenile Nonfiction, 811.54 Lew).
The University Library is a federal depository with many federal, state, local, and international documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in print, microfiche, CD-ROM, and electronically. Come check out your government at the University Library!
Great; poetry is perhaps “prose on steroids,” probably “more intensity from writer, in language, for reader.” But heck tooo much “poetry” today lacks FOCUSED FORM, also SUAVE SHOWING (as against Tired Telling)….. [1.] FORM: I don’t mean str8jakkit of “sonnet” etc. I mean some rhythm if not rhime, and gosh, line-breaks please! also called “enjambment.” Whereas toooo much “poetry” today is just prose runnnning out on the page in a diluted blob of blurb, and choppppped uup into “lines” when the page margin arrives? BETTER is “use each line as a unit, brake/break-point, & pivot.” ….. And [2.] SUAVE SHOWING: toooo often poetry is just Diluted Daily Diary “this happened and I feel this way ohh” (see a social svc. agency please). BETTER is “create a little story that we read, experience, and wow we believe.” ….. Here is a poem (not mein) I quote from memory. “HE” He / has never called me or written. // My mother dials the telephone and says, / “Here he is.” [{( BINGO……. )}] A Verse A Day Is Not Adverse…