The return of a live Poets Online

[Poets Online]

After a long delay, poetsonline.org is back live and updated. Blame the end of summer, new semester teaching assignments, laziness, health issues and a nasty bug that got into the code - but all seems better now. Thanks to those who expressed email concerns about our/my absence.

Poems from the literary terms prompt are in the archive and a November prompt is on the site and (a bit more expansively) on the blog. It features a poem by Robert Sward who I had the pleasure to write with just recently.

Speaking of prompts, two recent books of poetic inspiration that I can recommend:

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories is a practical guide about the writing process rather than about the craft of writing with lots of short prompts and examples.

Diane Lockward's The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop is just that - a collection with sections like "Sound," "Voice," and "Syntax" and writing and revision suggestions, a model poem,  and examples of poems written from that prompt.  If you are in the NY/NJ area on Sunday, November 10 at 2 PM, twenty poets who contributed to the book (including myself) will be reading at a launch event for the book. Say hello!