It’s April, National Poetry Month! Explore haiku, hip hop, sonnets, ghazals and epics — all kinds of poets and poetry all around About.com.
Featured Articles
Poetry History
About Dante!
About.com Italian Language Guide Michael San Filippo has the entire Divine Comedy posted on his site, the original Italian terza rima in parallel columns with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s English translation. Bonus treat: the six sonnets Longfellow wrote while he was doing the translation, which served as “poetical fly-leaves” introducing the three parts of the great poem.
Chansons de Geste — an introduction to the Old French epic poems, “songs of deeds” centering around heroic historical figures, from Medieval History Guide Melissa Snell
The Shapes of Poems To Come
Concrete Poetry/VisPo — Poems Take Shape on the Screen
CyberSpace is not simply htmlizing, is what we here at About Poetry believe, nor is it simply a community-enforcement squad’s redefinition of friends and lovers fleshless. We see a poem on a screen as a poem, a connector of linguistic holistic hooliganisms, a shameless shaman sham’n’truth shake. Partake of our collection of poetry in which the visual element is part of the poem’s art, the typographical arrangement of letters and words on the page (or as here, on the screen) is as much a part of the poem’s essence as the more traditional poetic techniques like prosody, meter, image, etc.
Why I Love Making, a meditation on media with poems, by Mike Hazard aka Media Mike — Mike Hazard, artist-in-residence at the Center for International Education in St. Paul, Minnesota, writes about making video poems and poetic videos even though they drive him crazy.
Poetry Everywhere on Earth
Geology Poetry
About.com Geology Guide Andrew Alden has amassed a varied and entertaining collection of poems written by geologists and fossil-hunters or touching on geological topics, including his own poem, “Quakespotting.”
Alfred Joyce Kilmer and His Memorial Forest — an annotated photo gallery on the North Carolina forest memorial dedicated to the author of “Trees”, from About.com Forestry Guide Steve Nix
More Poetry Features
Online poems, competitions, history and composition. Check out these other About articles on poetry.
Forums It’s National Poetry Month Again
How have you celebrated? Did you treat yourself to a new book of poems by your favorite poet? Did you get up and share one of your own poems at an open mike for the first time? Contribute your notes and find out what other poets and poetry lovers have done to make April special this year.
Near You: Local Resources
Find information on poetry in your area here.
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