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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Happy Birthday, Louis Zukofsky.

Happy Birthday, Louis Zukofsky.

(Source: The New York Times)

Paul Foster Johnson: If experimental poetry were a Prince song it would be this one. This ballad has no verse and no chorus, but uses a meandering vocal line to tell the fragmented story of an affair with a witty waitress called “Dorothy Parker.” The vocals and the drums propel the track forward and push the watery keyboards and synth bass into the background. It’s a pared-down sound for a song about nerds flirting awkwardly. Dorothy makes fun of Prince for ordering fruit cocktail, insists on taking communal baths with their pants on, and sings along with Joni Mitchell on the radio. For his part, Prince thinks of his encounter with Dorothy as an escape from his purple rainy baggage, and learns to self-sooth by re-enacting the bathing-with-pants-on scene until “all the fighting stopped.” Their quirky romance is embalmed in the coolness of Prince’s minimal funk. 

(Source: coldfrontmag.com)

Frank Stanford, it’s your birthday. tonight the gars on the trees are swords in the hands of knights the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind is I am waving goodbye

Frank Stanford, it’s your birthday.

tonight the gars on the trees are swords in the hands of knights

the stars are like twenty-seven dancing russians and the wind

is I am waving goodbye

Break the line to the 2012 Poets Forum >

Allen Ginsberg’s copy of The Wasteland

Allen Ginsberg’s copy of The Wasteland

(Source: blogs.law.harvard.edu)

anticipatedstranger: Abe’s Peanut just released a set of postcards for kids with poems by Timothy Donnelly (featuring this card, Edna the Echidna, and Floyd the Airborne Hydroid, among others) and clip art by me.

anticipatedstranger:

Abe’s Peanut just released a set of postcards for kids with poems by Timothy Donnelly (featuring this card, Edna the Echidna, and Floyd the Airborne Hydroid, among others) and clip art by me.

poetrysociety:  Today, in 1913, Ezra Pound published this poem:In a Station of the Metro The apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough.

poetrysociety:

 Today, in 1913, Ezra Pound published this poem:

In a Station of the Metro 

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Harlem by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore - and then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over - like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.Or does it explode?

Harlem by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore - and then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over - like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?


(Source: Flickr / rebecca_e_g)

Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander. Get it before it becomes un-gettable >

Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander.

Get it before it becomes un-gettable >

“Goethe” by Klaus Peter Dencker

“Goethe”

by Klaus Peter Dencker