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Forms & Techniques
Ever wonder how many lines are in a sestina? How many syllables are in a haiku? How to properly use anaphora? Browse through articles about poetric forms and techniques. From abecedarian to villanelle, these essays are great for reference or for sharpening your writing skills.

Poetry Glossary
What's the difference between denotation and connotation? The meaning of the word synesthesia? How does a couplet become a heroic couplet? The answers to these and a great many other questions can be found in our glossary. Great for writers, students, and teachers.

The Art of Finding
by Linda Gregg
"We are most likely to find this union by starting with the insides of the poem rather than with its surface, with the content rather than with the packaging."

Souls on Ice
by Mark Doty
"Our metaphors go on ahead of us, they know before we do. And thank goodness for that, for if I were dependent on other ways of coming to knowledge I think I'd be a very slow study."

Gimmicks
by Ron Padgett
"There are intelligent people who attack the use of gimmicks or devices...on the grounds that such devices encourage kids to be thoughtless smart alecks."

The Elements and Function of Poetry
by George Santayana
"The highest form of such euphony is song; the singing voice gives to the sounds it utters the thrill of tonality."

Metaphor
by Owen Barfield
"Every modern language, with its thousands of abstract terms and its nuances of meaning and association, is apparently nothing, from beginning to end, but an unconscionable tissue of dead, or petrified, metaphors."

An ABC of Translating Poetry
by Willis Barnstone
"Translation is an art between tongues, and the child born of the art lives forever between home and alien city. Once across the border, in new garb, the orphan remembers or conceals the old town, and appears new-born and different."

Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton
"The most delightful part about our collaborating is the shared creative burden. Even when we think we are stumping one another, the other can usually think of something to follow right away."

Joshua Beckman and Matthew Rohrer
"We've always been interested in collaboration and the idea that being an artist or a writer in a community becomes a form of collaboration—not just working in dialogue with people, but actually writing with them."

Flying Revision's Flag
by Donald Hall & Martin Lammon
"Revision can be demanded if it cannot be taught. What must be taught is the ability to see one's errors..."

The Glorious Thing
by Jorie Graham & Mark Wunderlich
"If I have a wish, it is that the body's (the heart's) knowledge be trusted again..."

Poet at the Dance
by Rita Dove and Robert McDowell
"A dancer toils in order to skim the surface of the floor, she develops muscles most of us don't even know we have; but the goal is to appear weightless."

Online Poetry Resources
Browse our list of online poetry resources to find the best places for poets on the web. Here you'll find links to online literary journals, electronic dictionaries, blogs, forums, and much more.

Book Recommendations
Can't decide what to read next? We asked dozens of notable poets to give us their recommendations.

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Entering to Win: On Poetry Contests
by Rob Casper
"The best way to win a poetry contest and get your poems published is to know what's happening in contemporary poetry. This means not only reading poetry, but also getting to know various contest-running magazines and presses as well."

Launched in 1996, American Poet is the Academy's biannual journal. The publication includes essays and interviews on writing craft, and each issue features a "manuscript study" that analyzes the process by which a poem came into being. Learn more >

The Poet
by Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty."

Beginnings
by C. K. Williams
"I'd fall asleep every night over a book, dreaming in other people's voices. In the morning I'd wake up and try, mostly fruitlessly, to write acceptable poems."

On Poetry and the Reallocation of Concentration: Learning to Forget 
by Beth Ann Fennelly
"Instead of paying 5% of our attention to twenty things, we need to pay 100% of our attention to the One Big Thing, in this case, the emerging poem."

The Poet's Trade
by Amy Lowell
"No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made..."

Death to the Death of Poetry
by Donald Hall
"Dubious elegies on the death of poetry shouldn't need answers. A frequently reported lie, however, can turn into fact."

Someone Reading a Book Is a Sign of Order in the World
by Mary Ruefle
"Is there a right time to read each book? A point of developing consciousness that corresponds with perfect ripeness to a particular poet or novel?"

Reasons for Poetry
William Meredith
"We owe it to ourselves and the poem to try to say, I can see this is good, and though at present I don't like it, I believe that with perseverance, et cetera."

Poetry and Ambition
by Donald Hall
"Abolish the M.F.A.! What a ringing slogan for a new Cato: Iowa delenda est!"

Introduction to the Best American Poetry 1990
by Jorie Graham
"The most frequent accusation leveled against contemporary poetry is its difficulty or inaccessibility. It is accused of speaking only to itself..."

The Heresy of the Didactic
by Edgar Allan Poe
"I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste."