[Definitions: A collection: you click on individual poems and read them.
……………….. A guide: you click on websites, each containing multiple poems.]
[Go to A Poetry-Lover’s Guide… main page]
[Note: for links to information about individual poets and additional poems, click on the “(more xxxxxx)” after the entry for each poet in the pre-1950 and post-1950 collections .]
Other Poetry Collections
Poets’ Corner (Steve Spanoudis, et. al.) – A venerable website including both popular classics (“Hiawatha”, “Invictus”) and the standard, accepted-as-great (“Ode to a Grecian Urn”, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”); over 7,300 works by about 800 poets [as of May 2021]. Subject categorization of the poems; good search capability. There was a major overhaul of the site in June, 2020.
Bartleby Verse (Bless them for honoring a lowly scrivener!): The complete texts of 70 pre-1930 anthologies and 80 famous, pre-1930 volumes of poetry by individual authors; tens of thousands of poems in total. [Feb. 2014] Individual Volumes in separate section following Anthologies. Plus Great Books Online (formerly Bartleby Library): hundreds of complete, pre-1930 books in the categories of Reference, Fiction, and Nonfiction.
Famous Poets and Poems – 34,000 poems, by 630 poets [as of June 2019]. All time periods. Biographies of poets. Option to sort poems either alphabetically or by number of views. “Top 50 poems”. “Poet of the Month”. (Added, 12 JAN 2007)
Leon Malinofsky’s Page An interesting and valuable site with 40 carefully selected poems along with music, images, True Speech, and certain of the author’s own writings. [Defunct, as of Dec, 2024]
The Hypertexts About 4,000 well-chosen poems by 500 poets, from all time-periods. Including: Featured Poets; Blasts from the Past; Holocaust; Contemporary Poets; Foreign/Translation; New Romantics; Contemporary [Visual] Artists; Songs and Poems that Changed the World; Dark Poetry; many more. Many with biography/photo. (Added, 12 FEB 2014)
The Poetry Foundation Their “poetry tool” is gone, but the foundation’s website remains a formidable web-poetry competitor. As of June 2019, there were 4,400 poets (1,700 from the 20th/21st centuries) and 44,900 poems. Search by poet or poem. The Poetry Foundation was formed in 2003 by a $200 million grant from the estate of Ruth Lilly; it’s the parent organization of Poetry Magazine.
Lyrical Legacy: 400 Years of American Song and Poetry 18 American songs and poems from the digital collections of the Library of Congress. (Added, 12 FEB 2014)
Shalizi’s Poetry Collection About 200 good poems by 40 pre-1950 poets
The University of Toronto’s Representative Poetry On-Line – 4,800 pre-1900 English poems by 700 poets [as of June 2019] ; chronologically organized (with author, title, keyword searching, too)
The (emule) Poetry Archives– 5,000 classical poems by 150 poets. Keyword searching. Defunct as of 2021.
ProQuest Literature Online (LION). “Full text of over 340,000 (English-language) poems; over 6,000 works of English and American drama from the late 13th century to the early 20th century; and over 3,250 works of prose from 1500 to the early 20th century.” (Formerly, Chadwyck-Healey’s LionHeart.) Note: This is for-cost, but may be available through a library you have access to….
Luminarium Medieval, Renaissance, and 17th century poetry
The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) – This site and Hishikawa’s (see Guides, below) are the places to go on the Web for 20th-century American poets. 10,000 poems, by 3,000 poets [as of June 2019]. This site has biographical information, poems, and links for each one. (Note: There are some English and some pre-20th-century poets included here as well.)
American Poems 230 American poets of all time-periods, with a biography of each. Many of the poems have visitor-posted comments. 8,000 poems and 20,000+ comments [as of June 2019]. (Added, 24 DEC 2005)
Wikipedia’s list of poems 500 famous (mostly English-language) poems (Added, 2 MAR 2016)
Wikipedia’s list of poetry collections (books of poems by individual authors) (about 500 such books, half with online links) and anthologies (about 70, almost all with online links) (Added, 2 MAR 2016)
Wikipedia’s Portal: Poetry Links to Wikipedia articles on poetry of every imaginable country, language, time period, and topic; scroll down to the middle section for “Topics” and “Categories”. (Added, 14 AUG 2023)
Project Gutenberg Texts of 59,000 free English-language ebooks –mostly literature, mostly pre-1920. More than 794 results for the keyword “poems”. E-books for Kindle. [As of June 2019.]
The EServer Poetry Collection (formerly Carnegie-Mellon University Index of Canonical Verse). Defunct as of 2019. This is a Wikipedia page about the history of EServer.org .
University of Michigan’s American Verse Project 150 American poetry books published before 1920, in their entirety. (Added, 26 JUL 2001)
Bibliomania Poetry Full text of 60 pre-1900 poetry books; mostly British. (Added, 22 DEC 2002)
MIT’s Internet Classics Archive a searchable collection of over 400 classical Greek and Latin texts (in English translation)
Cosmoetica’s Neglected Poets A-F; G-L; M-R; S-Z About 200 poems by neglected 20th century poets; many good poems not found elsewhere.
PoemHunter.com (C E Teymur) More than 1 million poems, by more than 100,000 poets; both classic and contemporary. (Some by living poets without their permission.) Though the texts are generally correct, there are some mistakes. (Added, 01 JAN 2003)
Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac”. Daily (brief) biographies of interesting people born on this day, plus a poem! (There used to be audio of Garrison reading the poem; that stopped in 2018, but they do have archives of his readings from 2014-2017.)
Poetry Daily – a sampler of contemporary print-published poetry; largely from books under copyright which aren’t available elsewhere. (365 poems, the past year’s-worth.)
A Little Archive of Poetry; formerly, Pete’s Best-Loved Poems. 800 “real” poems: sentimental, rhymed : “Casey At the Bat”, “Annie and Willie’s Prayer”, “Heaven’s Grocery Store”. Link not working, 2-Mar-2016.
Don’t miss “The Ride of Jennie M’Neal” (Link changed, 23 JAN 2015)
Some More Noteworthy Web-Published Poetry Collections:
Hello Poetry “an uncluttered, peaceful space to read and share poetry”
Poetry Super Highway Includes a once-a-month radio open mic.
Grouping of the PLGWWW and the Scraps of Faith poems by subject
Poetry Bulletin-boards
Many other bulletin-boards are listed at Feedspot Poetry Forums
Mutual links to various other poetry collections
Great Books/Internet Archive . (Mostly) not poetry … but lots of great prose. 142 books, as of June 27, 2015.
Other Poetry Guides
Patrick Martin’s Poetry Resource a venerable guide; all periods, 600 links, most with comments by Patrick; not updated since 2007. (Link pmpoetry.com not working, 14 AUG 2023)
Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (Professor Eiichi Hishikawa, Kobe University, Japan) 159 sites, representing the best-known published poets of the 20th century; not updated since 2006
Poetry Portal “Poetry Online”, “E-zine listings”, “Bulletin Boards”, “Competitions”, “Chit-Chat”, and much more. Defunct as of AUG 2023.
poetry.about.com . . . SEE “ThoughtCo. – Poetry”, below, in the “Essays About Poetry” section.
The Open Directory Project / Arts/Literature/Poetry “Aims to reflect the historical snapshot of the [now defunct] DMOZ database”.
Modern American Poetry An Online Journal and Multimedia Companion to the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Added, 22 DEC 2002)
Passions in Poetry Classical poems; Love poems, sad poems, friendship poems, etc.(Added, 19 JUN 2010)
LitRefs: Tim Love’s literary references Strong on UK sites/poets (Added, 18 JUN 2010)
Jacket magazine’s Literary links & electronic magazines 1,600 sites [as of Dec. 2024] mostly contemporary; with descriptions by John Tranter. (Added, 03 FEB 2002)
The Literary Web (U. Virginia). Links to academic websites. Especially, the “Literary Resources” and “Poetry” sections. (Link not working, Aug. 2020)
Modern & Contemporary American Poetry Reading for the English 88 class at the University of Pennsylvania. Several hundred links.
Poets & Writers Resources for poets and writers: contests, publishing advice, links, news, trivia, directory of writers, “Out Loud Audio”.
Guides to Literature Resources on the Web (Mostly Prose):
Literary Resources on the Net (Lynch/Rutgers) [Link corrected (1 Oct 2019)]
English Literature on the Web (Mitsuharu Matsuoka) [Link corrected (1 Oct 2019)].
Links to sites with free literary e-books
Essays about Poetry
ThoughtCo. – Poetry articles on various poetry topics. (poetry.about.com now redirects to this website.) (Added, 12 JUN 2017)
Dana Gioia’s “Can Poetry Matter” (from the May 1991 issue of The Atlantic Monthly)
Interview with Dana Gioia: “Paradigms Lost” (from the Spring 1995 issue of ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum)
RJ McCaffery’s ramble across several subjects: Poetics, Communication, Poetry,…” (Link not working, Dec. 2006)
“Void”‘s Introduction to the Notes to his collection of poems, Ex Nihilo
Lucius’ Appreciation of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess
The Contemporary Poetry Review / The Critical Flame
John Tranter’s Jacket magazine Forty issues (– none since 2010 –); mostly contemporary poetry.
Poetry Writing and Analysis Guide A good poetry primer — including “A Short History of Poetry”, “Major Poetic Forms”, “Major Movements in Poetry”, “Tips for Writing Poetry”, and more. (Added, 18 AUG 2020)
Poets of the Renaissance A good, easy-to-understand page with links to info about Petrarch, Shakespeare, Sidney, Herbert, and Campion.
Sit Down and Write: Poetry Resources A good, basic page for younger, beginning poets.
Money-Saving Guide for Young Authors and Writers Another good list of resources for aspiring young authors. (Added, 15 NOV 2021)
Writing Poetry at the Playground: 25 basic poetry terms defined (Added, 15 NOV 2024)
Updates
updated Oct. 10, 2009
updated Dec 20, 2009: deleted non-working links for Random Poetry and Poetry Pond
Jul. 15, 2011: corrected various links; deleted “Random Poetry” site
Dec 22, 2011: corrected “Paradigms Lost” link; deleted Jacket magazine (link not working)
Mar 22, 2012: reinstated Jacket
Dec 30, 2012: three links deleted; four links corrected
Mar 11, 2013: corrected Poetry Portal link
May 22, 2013: added PostPoems
Feb 12, 2014: added: The Hypertexts, LC Lyrical Legacy, Literary Web
Jan 23, 2015: removed three not-working links: Poetry Superhighway; Poetry Scriber; Yahoo’s Web-Published Poets
Jun 26, 2015: Great Books Collection link not working; replaced with Internet Archive Great Books
Apr 04, 2016: Corrected link to Gioia’s essay, “Can Poetry Matter”; added links to Wikipedia list of poems and collections/anthologies
Sep 06, 2016: removed non-working: ludlowpress.com, everypoet.com, Poetry Pond, Electronic Poetry Review
Jun 10, 2016: changed poetry.about.com to www.thoughtco.com/poetry-4133232; reformatted page
Apr 19, 2018: corrected poetry.eserver.org link; added Hello Poetry; removed “Literature Post”
Jul 01, 2018: Chadwyck-Healey’s LionHeart redirecting to ProQuest Literature Online
Oct 21, 2018: Corrected Great Books Online link
Dec 24, 2018: Removed Spondee [defunct]
May 16, 2020: Link changed to history/disappearance of EServer.org
May 16, 2020: Correction of Wikipedia “Poetry” link
Jun 23, 2021: Updated Poets’ Corner, LION, emule, and Open Directory project entries
Aug 14, 2023: Updated Poetry Bulletin Boards; added Wikipedia’s Portal: Poetry; Patrick Martin’s Poetry Resource not working