P.C. Home Page . News and Recent Additions 
Poets: A B . C D . E F . G H . I J . K L . M N . O P . Q R . S T . U V . W X . Y Z
|
P.C. Home Page . News and Recent Additions Poets: A B . C D . E F . G H . I J . K L . M N . O P . Q R . S T . U V . W X . Y Z
|
Frequently Asked QuestionsVersion 6.0, 6/18/2020 by S.L.S.
Poets' Corner is an anthology, or collection of works gathered from many different sources. The promise of the internet is communications - the ability to find things of value, to communicate with others for common understanding, to make resources - often things that might otherwise be lost - available to many instead of a few. The editors of this site have taken on the mission of serving this role for the art of Poetry. It is our desire to compile the largest, most diverse, and most accessible online collection of poetry in the world. There are over 7.300 works online by approzimately 800 poets. The format and the background scripting behind it is simple and streamlined - making the site fast and easily reachable / usable from anywhere in the world with nearly any net-connected device.
The site was initially created by Steve Spanoudis of Coral Springs, FL, who has been joined over the years by Bob Blair from Austin, TX, Nelson Miller from Macon, GA, and Jon Lachelt from Fort Collins, Colorado. In addition, this site has received the support of individuals from around the globe, and is used by thousands of people each week.
The Subject Index is still a work-in-progress - it is in the midst of a long-term re-write, but is a good place to browse / wander / look for things. There is a search engine, but it is not as powerful as I would like. It also searches the entire collection of collections that is The Other Pages, so your results may be mixed. You may need to click on "Next Matches" multiple times to see all of your matches.Please note that many of the files in the collection, particularly the older files, contain multiple poems. Make sure you scroll down. Even if you are not searching for anything, these contain good material for browsing, some of which, literally, you will not find anywhere else. If all else fails (not as a first course of action, please), e-mail questions are answered if one of the editors is available. Note that we cannot guarantee an answer, though our track record is probably better than 80%. Questions through the Facebook page are probably seen the quickest.
If you are a student who is using the site for a homework assignment, understand that it is not our job to help you get it done. We receive numerous homework assignment requests during the academic year, ranging from elementary school to college undergraduates. Most students have their greatest difficulty (a) figuring out what a poem's true subject is, and (b) figuring out how the poem's mechanics support its meaning. I can't emphasize enough that, for a well-written poem, the sound is usually tailored to the meaning. Reciting a poem aloud and paying attention to what you're saying helps as much as anything. If there is a word you don't understand, look it up.
You are more than welcome to link to the Poets' Corner home page, or to any specific poet or work you wish. If it wasn't meant to be looked at by everyone it wouldn't be here. Note that in some parts of the collection (mainly the parts created in 2000-2002), there is generally only one poem per HTML file. In older or newer parts of the collection, you will want to reference the filename and anchor tag, for example, "keats01.html#2" Sorry, we can not manage or maintain a library of reciprocal links. There are loads of search engines and other sites that do that. I want to spend our limited time and resources maintaining the collection itself - not verifying owners, checking for scams, and watching for broken links when things on other sites come and go. Our list of external links is short. No other poetry site has been as consistently accessible as this one. To the best of our knowledge, everything presented in "Poets' Corner",
unless explicitly annotated otherwise, is believed to be in the public domain
We have a hope that at some point we will be able to get permission to add more recent works, and these will be designated with the appropriate copyright information. These may not be copied or distributed further without permission of the copyright holder. As we have no budget for this, it may also be a long, long time. If you are duplicating or researching something, please do us the courtesy of listing the Poets' Corner URL (https://theotherpages.org/poems/) as a reference. Even the NY Times does us that courtesy. Since the few remaining commercial search engines have become so heavily weighted toward advertisers, word of mouth (social media) is once again becoming the best communications medium. If you are among the 48% of our users who are outside the US, please check on the local copyright status before assuming 20th century works are in the public domain. Please also note that the copyright notice on the collection references 'The Collection', all editorial content and annotation, and the HTML scripting and graphic that comprise the collection's characteristics. Please do not 'lift' pages from the collection to plug into your own online collection. They become 'dead files' that can not be maintained, and whose linkages are incorrect. Instead please link to the relevant page in the collection, or cut and past the unformatted, unlinked text you wish to reference into your own document.
The easiest way to send a poem is to cut and paste it into an ordinary e-mail message. Please include the source information to help us in confirming that the work is not under copyright. Try to be faithful to the spelling and indentation of the original. (Many poetry readers are natural proofreaders, it seems, by nature.) Poems will be scripted in html as closely as possible to the original print versions. Because of the wide range of readership this site enjoys, there are some basic ground rules on content: we tend to avoid explicitly sexual, hate-ridden or prejudicial material. Fortunately, since people tend to send in their favorites (and there are good reasons why poems become favorites), the acceptance rate is very high.
English is the native language of all of our editors and, for the first several years, was the de facto language of the net. The collection has substantial American and British content, though nearly all of the Commonwealth is represented. It is perhaps one of the basic characteristics of poetry that it is so intimately a part of its native language that it generally does not translate well. It is very difficult to match the rhyme, form, meaning, and meter in more than one language at a time. There are exceptions to this, so we will from time-to-time add translated works. Most of the well-known translations are 'interpretive' in nature, not literal. Fitzgerald's version of the Rubaiyat is a prime example. I learned my own lesson by spending a year translating Virgil's Aeneid from Latin once upon a time. Heu (sigh). If you want to contribute a non-English poem, please provide an English translation as well. The site does not contain much in the way of literary criticism, as such. Some of the major works have introductions by the contributors or editors. There are some major works where annotations are included, and Bob Blair has been the principal editor in this area. The best discussions are usually the articles we write for National Poetry Month. See the links at the top of the home page. My apologies to all A.P. English students out there who would like their homework done for them. Please see the section above on Homework.
Poets' Corner - Home |
The Other Pages |
