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yet another poetry resource page, for readers and writers
Most recently updated: Fri Mar 31 12:00:02 UTC 2023
Caution: there is such a thing as bad poetry.
Everything here is on this one page, so you can use your browser's "search on this page" capability to find what you saw once and need again, quickly.
But first, some vital statistics.
For Friday -- on March 31:
in 1621, English poet Andrew Marvell was born;
in 1631, English poet John Donne died;
in 1809, English poet Edward Fitzgerald was born; and
in 1970, English poet Nancy Price died.
For Saturday -- on April 1:
in 1647, English poet John Wilmot was born;
in 1710, U.S. poet Martha Wadsworth Brewster was born;
in 1918, English poet Isaac Rosenberg died;
in 1948, U.S. poet Bruce Andrews was born;
in 1949, U.S. poet Gil Scott-Heron was born; and
in 2003, British poet Richard Caddel died.
There's much to explore here. But don't neglect the (obviously very incomplete) list of individual poets down there.
"a one-of-a-kind poetry brawl"
"WARNING! We're mean. We're nasty. We're merciless. We're cruel. We're vile. We're heartless. We'll slash your soul to ribbons. We're an evil clique conspiring to annihilate your self-esteem. Ready?"
This site is quite well-organized. Once you've registered and read the posting guidelines and such, you start out in the "Newbie Stretching Room". As you refine your skills, you continue to "General Poetry", "C&C", "High Critique", and "Merciless and Possibly Painful Critique". (There are specialized forums along the way, for humor and erotica and such.)
But if you wish to feast on the criticism goodness, you're also expected to cook and wash dishes. You're expected to critique three poems for each poem you post for criticism. Not only does this motivation ensure that every submitted poem will get critiqued; it also builds your skills as a poet.
In addition, there's a wealth of material about poetry here that you should get under your belt. An evening or two devoted to absorbing this material would be time well spent. I have only two objections to it. First, much of it is in the form of the whining of newbies followed by the all-wise answers, tailored to bring the newbie down to earth or better. It takes time to wade through this. Second, some of the material is outdated. The prime examples of this are (a) link rot, and (b) their discussion of the poetry.com (not poetry.org) website. As of when I last looked at
Thu Dec 24 11:17:02 PST 2015
they claim that poetry.com is a scam site, where you post your work and you're automatically a semifinalist, and your poem will appear in a book, and you get to buy the (outrageously priced) book. This was apparently once true, but the folks at about.com claim that a new company bought the domain name in 2009, and it's no longer a scam site. More info is at wikipedia. I'm not sure how much it's improved; see my comments about poetry.com below. Bottom line: although the info at Free-For-All seems outdated, their advice to avoid poetry.com still seems wise.
This one is decidedly not a brawl. If you want high energy, go to Free-For-All. If you want serenity, go to Forage. Both offer thoughtful peer review of your poems. For poets in the United States, you might enjoy, at least as a change of pace, the -- how do I word this? genteel? -- ambiance of Forage, where the people are as likely as not to come from the UK, Canada, Australia, and other places where they spell "color" differently from the way I do.
These sites are serviceable enough, but do not have the helpful structure and wealth of information of Free-For_All or Forage. After a brief, careless examination, it seems to me that eratosphere is the marginally more useful of these two.
Bottom line: don't go to poetry.com. I went there so you don't have to.
My first observation was that when I moused over their logo in the upper lefthand corner of the page, the logo itself did a cute little dance. I had the immediate impression that I'd just stepped onto a used car lot. Or, more precisely, that I'd stepped into a used car lot and needed to clean the bottom of my shoe.
My second observation was the recommended course of action:
1. Share your Poem.
2. Get reviews in 60 minutes or less.
3. Win Prizes and Have Fun!
First, their use of capitalization is atrocious. Those words were written not by someone with reverence for the English language, but by a two-bit gum-chewing high school graduate (probably) with a keen sense as to what will pull in the suckers. Second, nobody who's serious about writing poetry needs a potential prize as a motivation. These guys are standing at a carnival booth and wielding a bullhorn: Step right up!
My third observation came when I tried to register. If you want to register at a place where you don't trust them not to invade your email inbox, get acquainted with spamgourmet.com first. I recommend that site highly. But some folks who want to invade your email inbox know all about spamgourmet, and will prevent registration of any email address associated with spamgourmet. They won't keep all disposable email addresses from being used, but they'll at least prevent those from spamgourmet. If you can register with an addresss from a generic place like yahoo or gmail (as I did) but can't register with an address from spamgourmet, you know that the site really, really, really wants to have permanent access to your inbox. And that's what I found with poetry.com.
My next step after registration was to type in a really, really bad poem to see how they'd treat it. Unfortunately, when I did, I got the message:
Content can't be blank
I most recently tried this at
Sat Jan 9 02:05:47 PST 2016
and I'll keep trying periodically. In the meantime, I haven't heard anything from poetry.com at my disposable email address beyond the usual signup messages.
If and when they fix the problem, I'll update this to let you know what happened. I'll also share my atrocious poem.
When I do, I'll slip this old ribbon into the typewriter so you won't have to use as much eye bleach after you read the poem.
Suppose you wanted to widen your reading of poetry. Suppose you wanted gobs of poets, all in one place, on one dart board, where you could just throw a dart and start reading. Bunches and bunches of poets, all right there at the tip of your dart. Here they are. Throw that dart and start reading. Obviously, some of them are better than others. Make up your own mind about what appeals to you.
If you're interested in a poet not listed here, you could do worse than to try poemhunter.com. Indeed, most of the links below go either there or to poetryfoundation.org.
You really, really don't want to read this.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton Meets Snoopy
by William J. Evans
Dark and stormy night.
Suddenly a shot rang out.
This is a haiku.