How do you find a good poem?
Where in the world do you look?
We used to have a really big tome—
A tome, as you know is a book..
And the book was Columbia Granger’s Index to Poetry, in which a person could look up a line by subject or author and then it would tell you what poem it came from and what book collection it was published in. Then if you happen to have that collection, you could look it up and read the poem. Easy—but there were a lot ifs in that process… Plus it is a really heavy book. Now there are many links to finding poetry online.It is easy to just Google a line of poetry, a poet’s name or even a topic like April poetry and find whole poems online. But if you are wanting to search more directly try one of these sites:
- Poets.org is the poetry search page of the Academy of American Poets
- The Poetry Foundation Publisher of Poetry magazine has a poet and a poem search plus an archive of the magazine.
- Bartleby.com Great books online
Allows you to search within classic books by phrases. - PoemHunter.com — Along with poem and poet searches, includes poem of the day, topic searches and quotations. It also encourages you to add your own poems.
- And finally, if you are a poet check out Poetry.com which lets you share your own poems and review others.