Poetry

• “...to rule out meter or rhyme as tools available to the poet is far more limiting than the playful, silk-ribbon bondage of the sonnet.” —A. E. Stallings
  Crooked Roads Without Improvement: Some Thoughts on Formal Verse
• “The grander goal is to be as good as Dante.” —Donald Hall
  Poetry and Ambition
• “Are we really saying that an artist will abandon a thing because it is difficult? What sort of an artist is that?” —John Whitworth
  Are Poems Still Allowed to Rhyme?
• Those who confuse “rhyme” with “reactionary" should read this poem...
• ...and this short manifesto...
• ...and this article.
• Chaos in Fourteen Lines
• Poetic Meter in English: Roots and Possibilities
• Bad Poets
• Negative Capability
• A Few Don’ts
• Duende
• Self-Reliance
• The sonnet: ruminations on form, sex, and history
• Harriet, a blog with articles by various poets
• Stallings at Harriet
• Critique Guidelines
• The Belletrist (new)
• Arts & Letters Daily
• Uncontainability Pours Forth: Rhyme, Meter, and Form in Best American Poetry 2007
• Edgy vs. Nice
• ISO the General Reader
• Guidelines for Editors

This last one isn’t about poetry, but I had to put it somewhere:

• Impolitic

• Duotrope
• Venues for Formal Poetry
• The Book of Forms, by Lewis Turco
• Irish Poetry Forms
• Sonnet Central
• Poetry Crossroads (new)
• The Discovery of Poetry, by Frances Mayes
• How to write a villanelle
• No, wait here’s how to write a villanelle
• How to write a roundel
• How to write a triolet
  
• How to write a poem about poetry
• How to write a poem about suicide
• Never, ever write a poem like this!
• rhymezone.com
• dictionary.com
• thesaurus.com
• Visuwords Graphical Dictionary and Thesaurus
• The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

• Eratosphere - Geared to metrical poetry.
• The Gazebo - More geared to non-metrical.
• The Sonnet Board - For sonnets, obviously.

• David Anthony
• Kate Benedict
• Alison Brackenbury
• Julie Carter
• Jehanne Dubrow
• Angela France
• R. Nemo Hill
• Jee Leong Koh
• Rob Mackenzie
• Mary Meriam
• Chris O’Carroll
• Steve Schroeder
• Mike Stocks

• Mortimer
• Lovesick and Zeitoun
• Readings at Soundzine

If you like these poems, you might like my book, Bundle o’ Tinder, which won the 2007 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was published in 2008 by Waywiser Press. The competition was judged by Richard Wilbur.

Alison Brackenbury liked it. In her review for Iota, she wrote, “Richard Wilbur has contributed a foreword of glowing praise. I can only agree, humbly. This first collection is a revelation.”

Here are some reviews you can read online:

• Clay Stockton at amazon.com
• Mary Meriam in Rattle
• Kevin Saving in The Recusant
• David Holper in The Chimaera
• Ned Balbo in The Antioch Review
• R. S. Gwynn in Able Muse

For those who aren’t familiar with Anthony Hecht: He was the real deal. You can read some of his poems online, or better yet, curl up with this.

Print

• Anon. A UK magazine that selects poems “blind.”
• Atlanta Review. Much better than their cheesy-looking website might lead you to believe.
• The Dark Horse. UK-based, mostly formal verse. Good articles.
• iota. UK-based, eclectic.
• Measure. Metrical verse; Nemerov winners and finalists.
• The Raintown Review. Metrical verse; ballsier than Measure.
• Poetry. Famous old magazine with a gazillion subscribers. Good articles and Letters section.

Online

• 14 by 14. Each issue features 14 sonnets by 14 authors.
• Anti-. Eclectic, contrarian. Be sure to check out this chapbook, Power Crazy Senior General Than Shwe, written in honor of the courageous Burmese poet Saw Wei.
• The Barefoot Muse. Strictly metrical verse.
• The Cortland Review. Many of the poems come with recorded readings by the authors.
• The Flea. An Exhibition of Poetickal Workes by Divers Authors.
• kaleidowhirl. Better than it sounds.
• Lucid Rhythms. Verse with rhythm, whether formal or free.
• Mezzo Cammin. Women formalists.
• Poemeleon. General-purpose, pretty-good zine.
• The Shit Creek Review. Cheeky little zine with a great name.
• Snakeskin. Accessible, smart, occasionally bawdy, always a fun read.
• Soundzine. The spoken word.
• Umbrella. Good poems, attractively presented.
• Unsplendid. New New Formalism?
• Valparaiso Poetry Review. General-purpose, pretty-good zine.
• Verse Daily. One new poem every day.
• The Poem Tree, The Hypertexts and Lilt are not zines in the usual sense, but evolving online anthologies.

In the desert Arrest Small Song Current Haunted by Waters The Lie Don't Freuden the Children Rounding Up the Mimes Taking It All Off Souvenir Amnestos Flashback Counting Out Rhyme North of Mist Made of Gauze Childhood Punishments My Papa’s Waltz My Papa’s Twist Those Winter Sundays This Be the Verse If We Must Die A Refusal to Mourn the Death... The Force that Through the Green Fuse... Arrowhead Hunting Ephesus The Relics For All the Saints Prayer Iconography Western Wind The Viking Terror Here Be Dragons Richard Corey Epic At Wounded Knee Witness This Advice to Young Ladies I, Being Born a Woman... You Anna Karenina (Or Like, Most of It) Meditation on a Bone The Fight Down Nocturne The Underground Attention Nothing Is Far Courage equals fever Ode to Gray Bavarian Gentians The Mandarin Orange Tree The Man Who Wouldn’t Plant Willow Trees A Lemon You and Me and P. B. Shelley A Disappointment To Us All Normalization Ceasefire Death of an Irishwoman Sea Fevers A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford Root Cellar Dolor The Meadow Mouse The Two-Headed Calf The Cat with its Blue Collar The Dogs of Ushuaia Crays Pigs Snake To a Dying Rat An Ancient Dog Grave... Explaining an Affinity for Bats Bat Meaner than a Junkyard Dog The Second Coming They Feed They Lion The Tyger Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience Lady Pu-abi the sirens answer Sea Floor Sea Change The Eyes of the Drowned Watch Keels Going Over The Fish The Fish, the Man, and the Spirit Angel Shark The Dark Ray The Lorelei The Abortion My Baby Fell Apart Ultrasound Empty Confessional Still Life with an Addict For a Relapse Crazyjane & the Crack Pipe Our Lady of Perpetual Help Factory Sacrifice Bells of Rhymney Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio The Shipfitter’s Wife Meat Packing The Man with the Hoe Waiting for the Watch The Famine Year Gone Living Lochinvar In a Nearby City (Pockets on Coffee) In the Well Résumé Bric-a-Brac The Deep End Mortal Stakes Glass Machines We Tend to Sleep Better... My Land Lusus Naturae Candle Hat Workshop Wind Bells Foghorn Dover Beach The Consuming Angel The Sonnet Fist Reply to Your Impertinent Request Caricature of Lord Hervey You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered Maledictus Requiescat An Essay on Criticism Men and Their Boring Arguments Fighting Words His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell The Explosion Two Boys On My First Sonne Mid-term Break Surprised by Joy And Then There Is That Incredible Moment... Why Publish? Practice Bittersweet Song Beauty in Trouble An Act of Final Beauty Pied Beauty God’s Grandeur God’s World Spring Sonnet Number 13 Somewhere in Africa Behaving Like a Jew The Mower Dirge Without Music Evening Benediction Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art After the Sun Rose The Harleys Beneath Thy Cross Christmas on Rhodes Dulce Et Decorum Est In Foreign Fields Musée des Beaux Arts Minor Character Ode to the Maggot I dream of you to wake... She was too kind... Cynthia on Horseback All in green went my love riding... In a Desert Place Being that Exquisite Weaving Pretty Barcelona Stories of Snow Hufsa The Snow Man Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening A Ballade of Suicide Acquainted With the Night With how sad steps, O moon... because the cut your presence Since there’s no help... More than most fair... Sweet warrior... French Braids There Was a Woman Once I Love You Sweatheart My mistress’ eyes... Late in the forest... A Taste of Ginger Not in a silver casket... Night is my sister... Nina’s Reply A Refusal to Sign the Zoning Petition A Rainy Morning The Blind Always Come as Such a Surprise Batter my heart, three person’d God... Archaic Torso of Apollo The Love that Dares to Speak its Name The Sailor’s Hymn

Hapax Occupation pseudophakia Diary of a Cell Smoke The Deed of Gift Folly The Hardship Post The Optimist Here from Away Torched Verse Ends The Past Completes Me The Everyday Uncommon Equal to the Earth An Alabaster Flask Anatomically Correct The Bell Across the Grid of Streets The Countess of Flatbroke Gardening in a Time of War The Performer We Internet in Different Voices Holding Patterns Graceways Aquinas Flinched Prospero at Breakfast Shakespeare’s Marijuana Unholy Sonnets The Laws of Falling Bodies Where Horizons Go Body Grief Easy Marks Words to Say

Free E-Books

• A Game of Graces by Philip Quinlan
• Tarn by Mark Allinson
• Man Overboard by Alan Sullivan

“Art is the lie that tells the truth.” —Pablo Picasso

“A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he is great.” —Randall Jarrell

“Your ‘I’ can become the universal ‘we’ if you dig deep, deeper than is comfortable, for the kernel of truth in your subject.” —Judith Barrington

“The chief pleasure of rhyme is the rage it inspires in its opponents.” —Paul Valéry

“We must have the courage of our peculiarities.” —Marianne Moore

“When I was in my twenties and writing iambic stanzas, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was a living reproach. For a while I denigrated Allen: ‘If he’s right, I must be wrong.’ Such an either/or is silly and commonplace: restrictions are impoverishments.” —Donald Hall

“It’s all good... unless it’s bad.” —K.R. Copeland

• Shop at EXOT Books, a chapbook press run by R. Nemo Hill
• Remember grasshopper, aka M.A. Griffiths
• Watch a video of Tim Murphy reading from his and Alan Sullivan’s translation of Beowulf. (Requires RealPlayer)
• Check out this collection of poems about wrestling, with artwork