Poetry Databases @ SAPL
Poets and Their Poetry
Charles Bukowski The Genius of the Crowd
Poets and Their Poetry
Naomi Shihab Nye Letters My Prez is Not Sending
Poets and Their Poetry
Billy Collins Forgetfulness
Poets and Their Poetry
Maya Angelou Still I Rise
Poets and Their Poetry
Lyla Johnston Poetry Slam Winner
Where to Slam in San Antonio
Poetry Slams in
2ndVerse
210.822.8555
Every second Friday 2ndVerse, an urban open mic event, gets grooving around 9 pm.
Fresh Ink
Bubblehead
1035
210.224.0559
Every third Friday, the under-21 Fresh Ink crowd can meet for an evening of uncensored open mic, where the slamming starts promptly at 7 pm.
Puro Slam
On the Half Shell
202 Navarro
210.222.2171
On Tuesday nights, the older kids can come out to enjoy two-buck beers and experience the priceless bravado of SA’s legendary Puro Slam.
Source: San Antonio Current, August 17-23, 2011, pg 18.
Audio Poems from the Poetry Foundation
Click on a link to hear a poem. Poems are updated regularly.
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One Favorite Poem
The Hummingbird: A Seduction
If I were a female hummingbird perched still
And quiet on an upper myrtle branch
In the spring afternoon and if you were a male
Alone in the whole heavens before me, having parted
Yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem
And earth down, your body hovering in midair
Far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee balm;
And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me,
And how you rose again and fell, with such mastery
That I believed for a moment you were the sky
And the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference
Was just the physical revelation of the light's
Most perfect desire;
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
The weaving, twisting vision of red petal
And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing
In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
Created completely out of nothing just for me,
Then when you came down to me, I would call you
My own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funnelling
Storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless
Piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base
Of each of your feathers and touch the tine
Of string muscles binding your wings and taste
The odor of your glistening oils and hunt
The honey in your crimson flare
And I would take you and take you and take you
Deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted.
Pattiann Rogers
Explore Poetry
Welcome to the Subject Was Poetry.
You have never wasted your
time by reading a poem.
Read one daily
There are many ways to get
inside a poem.
Embrace Ambiguity!
See the How to Read a Poem
box below.
Writing Poetry Books @ SAPL
Poetry Books @ SAPL
Poetry Web Sites
- Academy of American PoetsLaunched in 1996, Poets.org is the award-winning website of the Academy of American Poets. You will find thousands of poems as well as hundreds of poet biographies, essays, interviews, and poetry recordings—with new material being added constantly. Also available are resources such as the National Poetry Map, a national events calendar, and poetry lesson plans for teachers. Poets.org receives a million visitors each month, making it the most popular site about poetry on the web.
- Poetry DailyPoetry Daily is an anthology of contemporary poetry. Each day, the site brings you a new poem from new books, magazines, and journals.
Poems are chosen from the work of poets published or translated in the English language. Our most eminent poets are represented in the selections, but also poets who are less well known. The daily poem is selected for its literary quality and to provide you with a window on a very broad range of poetry offered annually by publishers large and small - Poetry FoundationThe Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience. The Poetry Foundation works to raise poetry to a more visible and influential position in American culture by developing new audiences, creating new avenues for delivery, and encouraging new kinds of poetry.
- Favorite Poem ProjectThe Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997.
- Boarderlands: Texas Poetry ReviewBorderlands: Texas Poetry Review is a literary journal based in Austin, Texas that publishes poetry along with photographs, reviews and essays. The Review features work of area artists. The journal's mission is to publish work of merit that shows an awareness of connection -- historical, social, political and spiritual. Borderlands is a national publication with a special interest in supporting Texas and other southwestern poets and artists.
How to Read a Poem
Embrace Ambiguity!
Here’s a tricky issue: the task is to grasp, to connect, to understand. But such a task is to some degree impossible, and most people want clarity. At the end of class, at the end of the day, we want revelation, a glimpse of the skyline through the lifting fog. Aesthetically, this is understandable. Some magic, some satisfaction, some "Ahhh!" is one of the rewards of any reading, and particularly the reading of poetry. But a poem that reveals itself completely in one or two readings will, over time, seem less of a poem than one that constantly reveals subtle recesses and previously unrecognized meanings.
Here’s a useful analogy. A life partner, a husband, a wife—these are people with whom we hope to constantly renew our love. Despite the routine, the drone of familiarity, the daily preparation of meals and doing of dishes, the conversations we’ve had before, we hope to find a sense of discovery, of surprise. The same is true of poems. The most magical and wonderful poems are ever renewing themselves, which is to say they remain ever mysterious.
Too often we resist ambiguity. Perhaps our lives are changing so fast that we long for stability somewhere, and because most of the reading we do is for instruction or information, we prefer it without shades of gray. We want it to be predictable and easy to digest. And so difficult poetry is the ultimate torment.
Torment, powerlessness—these are the desired ends? Well, no. The issue is our reaction, how we shape our thoughts through words. We have to give up our material attitude, which makes us want to possess the poem. Maybe we’ve bought the book but we don’t own the poem. We have to cultivate a new mindset, a new practice of enjoying the inconclusive.
Embracing ambiguity is a much harder task for some than for others. Nothing scares some people like the idea (even the idea) of improvisation as a writing or analytical tool. Some actors hate being without a script; the same is true of some musicians. Ask even some excellent players to improvise and they start to sweat. Of course, actors and musicians will say that there is mystery in what they do with a script or a score, and it would be pointless to disagree. The point, after all, is that text is mysterious. Playing the same character night after night, an actor discovers something in the lines, some empathy for the character, that he or she had never felt before. Playing or listening to a song for the hundredth time—if it is a great song—will yield new interpretation and discovery. So it is with great poetry.
Source: From Modern American Poetry, selected and edited by Joseph Coulson and Peter Temes (Great Books Foundation, 2002).
Poetry Guide |
 Sandra Carreon Griffin Links: Profile & Guides |
Links to the Library
A New Poem Every Day
Click on the link and go to the complete poems for the day.
More Poetry Web Sites
- Austin Poetry Slam
Site for the Austin, Texas, poetry slam. Also includes a significant amount of information regarding how to host slams, how to judge slams, and Austin- and Texas-specific poetry news. What's a Slam? Poets perform for three minutes each using nothing but their body and a microphone. Judges are randomly selected from the audience to score poetry on a scale from zero point zero to ten point zero. Poets perform for three minutes each using nothing but their body and a microphone.
- Poetry Slam, Inc.
The mission of Poetry Slam Incorporated (PSI) is to promote the performance and creation of poetry while cultivating literary activities and spoken word events in order to build audience participation, stimulate creativity, awaken minds, foster education, inspire mentoring, encourage artistic statement and engage communities worldwide in the revelry of language.
- Poets & Writers
Poets & Writers, Inc., is the primary source of information, support, and guidance for creative writers. Founded in 1970, it is the nation's largest nonprofit literary organization serving poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. The national office is located in New York City. The California branch office is based in Los Angeles.
- Poetry Out Loud
The National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation have partnered with U.S. state arts agencies to support Poetry Out Loud, a contest that encourages the nation's youth to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. This program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage.
Poetry News
Mayor Castro announces nationally renowned author Carmen Tafolla as
San Antonio’s inaugural Poet Laureate
On April 3, 2012,
"I can think of no one more worthy of this honor than Carmen Tafolla. She's not only an accomplished poet and educator; she is a homegrown talent who embodies the power and poignancy of art in our community. I am proud to call her
Tafolla’s goal as Poet Laureate, she believes, is to bring the joy of literature into the daily lives of the people of this great pueblo, and to empower the expression of their own poetic voices in our young and old alike. She believes strongly that a multicultural dual-language education is one of the greatest gifts we can provide our children, and that effective family literacy is heavily dependent on the availability of stories and literature to which people can relate culturally and realistically. “Literacy and literature cannot be realistically separated if we hope to have an impact on all of our residents,” says Tafolla. “Powerful stories that reflect our reality reverberate inside us, and give us meaning. Literature cannot afford to be elitist or disconnected from the community.”
For more information about the San Antonio Poet Laureate Initiative, please contact Diana Hidalgo at the Office of Cultural Affairs at 210.207.6568 or e-mail at diana.hidalgo@sanantonio.gov.
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