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Poetry: Resources for Studying and Writing Poetry

Poetic Devices for Elementary Students: Using examples from published children's poetry, I launched a Web page to support elementary-age student poets. This page is illustrated with Sabino High School students' masks. This page includes a bibliography as well as a downloadable graphic organizer for elementary readers as they learn to identify poetic devices in the poems they read.

Poetic Devices for Secondary Students: When I was the teacher-librarian at Sabino High School, I created a Web page to support middle and high school students in writing poetry. The page includes definitions for poetic devices with examples from Sabino students' poems. It is illustrated with students' masks from a ceramics project. This classroom-library collaborative unit of study is found on the ReadWriteThink Web site.

Rhetorical Figures in Sound: The American Rhetoric Web site provides examples of forty different figures of speech. Each figure of speech is defined and followed by multiple examples that include audio or video clips of the examples, many of which are delivered by famous actors or political figures.

This is a downloadable bookmark to support your work with students during Poetry Month (pdf file).

Favorite Poetry Web Sites: These are some of the poetry sites you might want to explore.

American Verse Project - This site contains American verse published before 1920. Search by author, title, and word. This site is hosted by the University of Michigan.

Academy of American Poets - This organization sponsors National Poetry Month and provides outstanding poetry resources.

Amsterdam Publishing: Poet's Paradise: A Collection of Helpful Resources is just that. Many of these links are most appropriate for secondary school students.

Atlantic Monthly's Poetry Page - The site contains both contemporary and classic poetry (and fiction) and includes audio files of poets reading their work. This is a poetry "current events" site.

Bartleby.com - Search the verse section of this site.

Children's Guide to Poetry - This site includes definitions, examples, and how-to write links for various types of poetry.

Education World - Poetry Month lesson plans and activities

Electronic Poetry Center - This goal of this site is to make available a wide range of resources centered on digital and contemporary innovative poetries, new media writing, and literary programming. It's hosted by the State University of New York - Buffalo.

Elements of Poetry - This interactive site provides definitions and poem examples of poetic devices.

Fooling with Words in the Play of Poets (with Bill Moyers) - This site is an archive of a 1999 program that includes video clips of poets reading their work. Educators can access lesson plans as well.

Glossary of Poetic Terms - This extensive collection of poetic terms compiled by Robert G. Shibinski is recommended for young adult and adult readers and writers.

PBS Poetry Page

Poem Hunter - Search by poet, poem title, poem text, singer, song, and song text.

Poem Present - The site offers readings and lectures from the University of Chicago.

Poems that Go - This site explores the importance of the presentation of poems on the page. It extends the poet's options beyond line breaks and stanzas to font size and features supported by 21st-century technology, "typographical experimentation."

Poetry 180: A Poem a Day - This resource was created by former poet laureate Billy Collins to encourage high school students to read and hear poetry every day of the school year.

Poetry Daily - In addition to a daily new poem from new books, magazines, and journals, this site offers an anthology of contemporary poetry.

Poetry for Children - This blog is hosted by Sylvia Vardell, Professor at Texas Women's University. During Poetry Month, she offers a post a day.

Poetry Foundation - This site has a "poetry tool" that allows users to search by various criteria. It also has podcasts and video, including a video by poet Elizabeth Alexander as she reflects on inauguration reading.

Poetry Teachers.com

Poets.org - This site is hosted by the Academy of American Poets. In addition to interviews, award and other announcements, and a discussion board, it includes a search feature to access poets and/or their poems (by title).

Scholastic - Poetry Month resources

The Ultimate Poetry Guide - FreeBookNotes.com offers links to writing prompts and poem ideas, poetry collections, lessons and activities, and more. (Suggested by Bev Schiff)

Updated: 13 September 2017