Recommended Website:
Representative Poetry
This website offers thousands of representations of various kinds of poetry spanning a timeline from Old English poetry (449-1066) to Postmodern poetry (1980 to today). You can search the site by poem title, poet name, and even by the first line or last line of a poem. The site also contains a timeline of poetry and a poetry calendar that commemorates the days of the year through the births and deaths and work of innumerable poets.
One of my favorite menu items at this site is “Random.” You can ask the search engine to produce the work of a random poet, poem, or short poem (less than 30 lines) contained in the archive. Either a poem is displayed with information on its origins, or a biography of a poet is displayed along with a sample of his/her work.
This is a text intensive site and is geared for usage by high school students and up. However, parents could easily help navigate younger students through the site — or just pick out some interesting poems (either silly or serious) and read them aloud — or print them out to assemble your own favorite poetry collection.
