Digital Learning Commons: Poetry: Collections

Online Anthologies

American Life in Poetry
American Life in Poetry is a free weekly column for newspapers and online publications featuring a poem by a contemporary American poet and a brief introduction to the poem by Ted Kooser, Poet Laureate of the United States (2004-2006). The site provides an archive of all past poems.
Favorite Poem Project
The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting, and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.
Poetry 180
Created by Billy Collins, Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. Although Collins has selected the poems here with high school students in mind, Poetry 180 is a great resource for all audiences with an appreciation for or interest in poetry.

Poetry Organizations

Poetry Foundation
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in American culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.
Academy of American Poets
Launched in 1996, Poets.org is the award-winning website of the Academy of American Poets. Visitors to Poets.org will find thousands of poems as well as hundreds of poet biographies, essays, interviews, and poetry recordings—with new material being added constantly. Also available: a National Poetry Map, a national events calendar, and poetry lesson plans for teachers.
Poetry Society of America
The Poetry Society of America, the nation's oldest poetry organization, was founded in 1910 for the purpose of creating a public forum for the advancement, enjoyment, and understanding of poetry. Through a diverse array of programs, initiatives, contests, and awards, the Poetry Society of America works to build a larger audience for poetry, to encourage a deeper appreciation of the art, and to place poetry at the crossroads of American life.

Audio

From the Fishouse: An Audio Archive of Emerging Poets
Founded in 2004 by Matt O'Donnell and Camille T. Dungy, From the Fishouse is an IRS-registered non-profit that promotes the oral tradition of poetry. The free online audio archive showcases emerging poets (defined for this purpose as poets with fewer than two published books of poetry at the time of submission) reading their own poems, as well as answering questions about poetry and the writing process.
Linebreak
Published every Tuesday, Linebreak features the text of a single poem accompanied by another poet's reading of the poem. These recordings may be downloaded as podcasts.
Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress
Webcasts and podcasts from the the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress.

Books

Poetry 180
A dazzling new anthology of 180 contemporary poems, selected and introduced by America's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Inspired by Billy Collins's poem-a-day program with the Library of Congress, Poetry 180 is the perfect anthology for readers who appreciate engaging, thoughtful poems that are an immediate pleasure.
Above the Dreamless Dead
A collection of World War I British trench poetry by poets such as Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, and Thomas Hardy, reinterpreted in graphic novel format by cartoonists such as Garth Ennis, Phil Winslade, and Katherine and Stuart Immonen.
The Pain Tree
This is a book of original poetry by and for teens. Dramatic, plaintive, despairing, and hopeful, this unusual collection has been gathered together by artists Esther Pearl Watson and Mark Todd and dramatically illustrated with stunning paintings.
Bum Rush the Page
Bum Rush the Page is a groundbreaking collection, capturing the best new work from the poets who have brought fresh energy, life, and relevance to American poetry. These poems are tough, honest, astute, perceptive, lyrical, blunt, sad, funny, heartbreaking, and true. They shout, they curse, they whisper, and sing. But most of all, they tell it like it is.
Beat Voices
In the conservative 1950s, a small group of unknown poets, writers, and assorted outcasts, among them Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Gregory Corso, unwittingly inspired a bloodless revolution that changed literature and lifestyle forever. The volume introduces the ambivalence of the age and demonstrates the rage and sensuality of the times.
Ain't I a Woman! A Book of Women's Poetry from Around the World
Spanning the centuries from Sappho's Greece to tenth-century Japan, from nineteenth-century Chile to Zindziswa Mandela's twentieth-century South Africa, the voices of these women poets express themes of love, injustice, motherhood, and loss, and the oppressions of race and sex.
The BreakBeat Poets
Just as blues influenced the Harlem Renaissance and jazz influenced the Black Arts Movement, hip-hop's musical and cultural force has shaped the aesthetics of and given rise to a new generation of American poets. The Breakbeat Poets are multigenerational and multiracial, employing traditional and wild style poetics to narrate a new landscape.