“Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” – Gustave Flaubert
The Poetry Foundation, the organization behind America’s best known and longest running poetry magazines, Poetry, has substantially expanded its online offerings. In celebration of next year’s 100th anniversary of the magazine, the new site contains every poem ever published there.
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“Poetry” reached a wider public consciousness almost a decade ago when Ruth Lilly, an heir to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune, donated an unheard-of $100 million to the magazine. In the interrim, the website has become one of the leading online voices for modern and contemporary poetry, with about 500,000 monthly visitors.
There are currently around 10,000 poems from 1,800 poets available. Rounding out the collection are PDFs of older offerings, some of them hallmarks of poetry in the modern age, such as T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
Additional changes include “a dynamic browsing carousel on the sidebar of each page” and the ability of readers to sign up for an account and save favorite poems under their profile. The search function is significantly improved, allowing readers to drill down into eras search for poems by themes, authors and many other fields. The children’s section has been expanded and books mentioned linked to buying opportunities.
“We’ve made poems and poets structurally central to the site,” said online editor Catherine Halley, “and, with our dynamic new browsing tool, users will be directed to additional material from our archive. All together, the new design and updated features will allow the site to reach a wider audience and introduce more people to poetry.”
The site also features discussion areas, podcasts and even a mobile app.
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