Share the joy of poetry in your classroom with these hand-selected sites

By Paul Janeszko

Favorite Poem Project
www.favoritepoem.org
Robert Pinsky, a recent United States poet laureate, started the Favorite Poem Project because he believed strongly that poetry, especially when spoken out loud, "connects us with our deep roots [and] our interdependence upon one another not only in space but in time." Today the site keeps those connections alive with audio and video clips of people reading their favorite poems; lesson plans for every grade level; suggestions for poetry events; even the chance to enter your favorite poem electronically into an ever-growing database. The site could easily serve as a model for a similar project in your school. Ask students and teachers about their favorite poems, but also explore other possibilities — ask the principal and the bus driver, too! Tape-record them reading their poems as Pinsky did, and watch your collection of spoken poetry grow.

Giggle Poetry
www.gigglepoetry.com
And now for something completely silly. Here your students will discover a wild mix of poems by kids — some really witty, some just goofy — and a fun chance to read 'em and rate 'em. Be forewarned, however: The jokes in some ditties on the site, like Bruce Lansky's "How to Torture Your Teacher," come at instructors' expense. But just think how cool you will seem for having handed over to your students the Web address where they found such info. Then click on Poetry Teachers, which takes you to a useful assortment of entertaining ideas for sharing poetry with your students.

Online Poetry Classroom
www.onlinepoetryclassroom.org
Give yourself plenty of time to browse here, because this site is loaded. Run by The Academy of American Poets, it's one of the most extensive teacher-centered sites out there. Not only does it include more than 12,000 poems, biographies, and other information on more than 450 poets — from Angelou to Yeats — but it gives you a chance to search categories such as What to Teach. There are curriculum units and lesson plans, essays, and a database of teaching standards. This site, more academic than most, provides a strong sense of community for those teachers who are looking for ways to teach poetry to young adults.

E-verse
www.milkweed.org/3_1.html
E-verse delivers "a new poem — current or classic" to brighten up your inbox every Monday. It's a free service of Milkweed Editions, a nonprofit literary press that believes literature is a "transformative art uniquely able to convey the essential experiences of the human heart and spirit," and it's an excellent way to discover exciting new poets.

Poetry in Motion
www.poetrysociety.org/motion/
This Web site documents the Poetry in Motion program, which was developed in 1992 by the Poetry Society of America and the New York City Transit Authority with the distinctly poetic dream of making public transit "a more pleasurable and enlightening experience." It offers two neat features: One is the Poetry Society of America Atlas, a searchable collection of 10 poems from each of 10 Poetry in Motion cities. The other is the Poetry in Motion Postcards, a feature which offers nine electronic postcards to send, each with one of the poems as it appears on the poetry placards. The Resources link contains connections to sites for poetry journals, book publishers, and more.

Paul Janeczko is the author of Opening a Door: Reading Poetry in the Middle School Classroom (Scholastic, 2003), from which this article was adapted for the April 2003 issue of Instructor.