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Online Essays about Poetry

from a variety of sources

reflecting a diversity of aesthetics

(tip of the iceberg: mostly does not include reviews or interviews)

Academy of American Poets. "Life Studies: American Poetry from T. S. Eliot to Allen Ginsberg"

Charles Altieri. "Contemporary American Poetry and Its Public Worlds."

Amiri Baraka. "Social Change and Poetic Tradition."

Martha Bayles. "Poetry & Its Discontents."

Harold Bloom. "They Have the Numbers; We, the Heights." (controversial introduction to The Best of the Best American Poetry; see also these responses from a number of contemporary poets.)

Eavan Boland. "Daughters." (Introducing an exhibit at Academy of American Poets)

Kurt Brereton. "Cyberpoetics of Typography."

Edward Byrne. "The Quality of Mercy: Philip Levine's The Mercy." (book review)

Carolina Quarterly. "The Art of Far and Near: An Interview with Robert Morgan." (a poet who should be better known)

Toi Derricotte. "The Bond of Living Things: Poems of Ancestry. (Introducing an exhibit at Academy of American Poets)

Joseph Epstein. "Who Killed Poetry?" (frequently discussed essay attacking contemporary poetry) [NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE]

Elaine Equi. "Unspeakable Ambitions." (reflections on poetic ambition)

Annie Finch. "In Defense of Meter."

Annie Finch. "Dickinson as a Poetess."

Brendan Galvin. "The Mumbling of Young Werther: Angst By Blueprint in Contemporary Poetry." (1978)

Edward Garnett. "A New American Poet." (early appreciation of Robert Frost--from 1915)

Albert Gelpi. "The Genealogy of Postmodernism: Contemporary American Poetry."

Dana Gioia. "Accentual Verse."

Dana Gioia. "Can Poetry Matter?" (the essay that launched a thousand other essays)

Dana Gioia. "Hearing from Poetry's Audience." (a follow-up to "Can Poetry Matter?" and the response it received.)

Dana Gioia. "Notes Toward a New Bohemia."

Alan Golding. "New, Newer, and Newest American Poetries."

David Graham. "Making the Stone Stony: Poetic Texture."

David Graham. "What the River Says": Notes on Poetic Closure

Bob Grumman. "Mnmlst Poetry: Unacclaimed But Flourishing."

R. S. Gwynn. "Introduction" to New Expansive Poetry. (good introduction to Expansive Poetry's aims)

R. S. Gwynn. "A Field Guide to the Poetics of the '90s." (lively, readable overview)

Donald Hall. "Death to the Death of Poetry" (good to read in conjunction with Dana Gioia)

Donald Hall. "Flying Revision's Flag" (an interview)

Seamus Heaney. "Crediting Poetry." (his Nobel lecture, 1995)

Anne Herzog. "Art of the World: Muriel Rukeyser's Poetry of Witness."

Ed Hirsch. "How to Read These Poems."

Jonathan Holden. "William Stafford: Genius in Camouflage."

Steve Kowit. "The Mystique of the Difficult Poem."

Paul Lake. "The Shape of Poetry." (in 2 parts)

David Lehman. "All-Century Team." (who are the best American poets of the 20th Century?)

David Lehman. "Introduction" to The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets

David Lehman. "The Questions of Postmodernism." (very readable overview)

Elizabeth Lund. "America's Largest Poetry Jam." (on the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival)

Walt McDonald. "Advice I Wish I'd Been Told." (for students)

Jerome McGann. "Contemporary Poetry, Alternate Routes" (on Language Poetry)

Frank Murphy. "Comic Poetry."

Tom O'Grady. "Stalking the Stuff of Poetry."

Walter Pater. "Style." (1888)

Marjorie Perloff. "Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject."

Marjorie Perloff. "Normalizing John Ashbery."

Robert Pinsky. "Poetry and American Memory."

Susan Rosenbaum. "Re-Reading Confessional Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop and the Confessional Moment in American Poetry."

Ira Sadoff. "Neo-Formalism: A Dangerous Nostalgia." (1990 attack on New Formalism)

Percy Bysshe Shelley. "Defence of Poetry." (1821)

Robert Sheppard. "The Necessity of Poetics"

R. T. Smith. " 'O Body Swayed to Music': Books on Poetry Writing and Reading."

Wen Stephenson. "Poetry and the Web."

Thomas Swiss. "Poetry and Pop." (connections between contemporary poetry & popular music)

Peter Viereck. "The Dignity of Lyricism: Form Yes, Formalism No."

Ellen Bryant Voigt. "Song and Story" (not an essay but a thoughtful interview with Steven Cramer)

Tom Wayman. "Writing Philosophy." (popular Canadian poet sums up his career: introducing his selected poems)

William Wordsworth. "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" by Wordsworth & Coleridge (1798)

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