The Academy of American Poets is for people who love poetry. Our membership is nearly 9,000 strong and growing, and our programs reach over 20 million people every year. Our programs include Poets.org, the Poets Forum, Poem in Your Pocket Day, National Poetry Month, American Poet magazine, the Poem-A-Day email series, the Poetry Audio Archive, educational initiatives, readings and events, awards and prizes, and so much more. We’ve been doing this since 1934, and we still think it's fun.
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Major Jackson writing about Brooks

Beautiful film on Tagore by Satyajit Ray. 

Mei Mei Berssenbrugge

Peter Gizzi’s Kinetic Typography. This is very cool. 

CD Wright reading poem

Colin Post et al. Check out all of these cool audio poems

I love this film! An affectionate moment between Johnny and Omar. From the acclaimed Kureishi written & Frears directed My Beautiful Laundrette. 

Allie Ligas—“Speechless Olympian”-intro to poetry workshop

Speechless Olympian


Philomel, the stringed quartet sings, still

Swallowing such fear you ought not to speak.

Melodies of lost sailor’s tears should kill

But leave behind such sylvan scenes.

Philomela, your abated Athenian diadem
Behind you, staggering girl, your thighs engraved

By the twisted claws, your nape caught in his hand,

He held you helpless suspect to be saved.

And when complete, he left you dead, dripping

Thick red sea foam from your blushing lips

Soundless screams in lonely halls, ripping

Discourse from your script.

Philomel, your silent song echoes swift

By sea shores on viola strings.
Refrains of weeping girls are left
To be carried on your wings. 

Brendan Jordan’s “Bait”—from Intro to Poetry 211

Bait

He’d casted clean nine times already, water blooming in a startled confetti to celebrate the precision of his line—

his technique placed the bobber fine,
but the fish must’ve kept on swimming
or else stayed in the green depths skimming

algae from the safety of the barbless stones. He stood on the darkening bank alone casting in arches over the black lake

when the cottonwood leapt out to take his line in its gnarled twig-grasp;
the reel almost snapped from the tin clasp

and the rod bowed like aspen in gale
and his shoulder jerked like a billowing sail— the bobber swayed uselessly above his head.

He’d search, again, for bleached and stale bread on his walk home; a meager offering pitched for the empty table his evenings wished

to fill with fish—now with lure and line left
to the night, he’d dream of meat and baked goods
on richer tables he longed to know, but never would. 

Poetry 211 Workshop

I’m posting two poems from my students, Brendon Jordan and Allie Ligas, who wrote wonderful poems inspired by Yeats. (The class voted on putting these poems up here.) We were reading the usual Yeats poems from 250 Poems: A Portable Anthology. Poems included in the anthology: Among School Children, Leda and the Swan, The Second Coming, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, and Sailing to Byzantium—and the students wrote about contemporary world issues and/or explored his form. I’ve got to figure out how to post pdfs. Let’s see what I can do.