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Poetry: now even more modern

Filed under: Headline Shooter

It may be time for the many eminent Luddites of verse to steel themselves and snap in their AirPort cards, and not on their portable Remingtons (that wouldn't work at all):

New York, NY (PRWEB) May 23, 2005 -- The Academy of American Poets has unveiled a completely revamped, redesigned, and expanded version of its award-winning website, www.poets.org. Tree Swenson, the Academy’s Executive Director, said, “More poems, more articles, more links, more ways to immerse yourself in poetry—welcome to the brand new Poets.org.”

In April 2005, Poets.org received 1.15 million visits, 570,000 unique visitors, and 7.8 million hits, with an average visit length of over 13 minutes. Poets.org is the most highly trafficked nonprofit poetry site on the web, according to Alexa.com, the web information service from Amazon.com. Poets.org offers nearly 2,000 poems, over 500 poet biographies, 400 essays and interviews, 150 audio recordings, lesson plans for teachers, a poetry gift shop, discussion forums, poetry news, events, and more. In the coming months, even more poetry, prose, poet biographies, and features will be added to Poets.org.

The site redesign includes a fresh new look, a beefed-up structure, improved navigation and search functions, revamped message boards and discussion forums, and new internal linkages. The site also features new technology, such as a php database and open-source technology servers, that will make the site up to three times faster. Poets.org is being redesigned with the assistance of Ruder Finn Interactive and Juxta Digital.

Robin Beth Schaer, the Academy’s web coordinator, noted that the new Poets.org will give readers access to an even deeper appreciation of poetry. “Our readers will see the rich connections between poets—influences and associations, movements and debates. They will discover the writers who have shaped American poetry in the past and those who are shaping it now.” Web associate Nathan Hill said, “Poets.org’s breadth and depth of content is extraordinary, but we think the site is so popular because it offers content and context. or example, if you’re interested in John Ashbery, Poets.org offers not only his photo, bio, and poems, but also an interview, audio recordings, a DVD, related poets, as well as external links.”

Swenson noted that the Academy of American Poets first went online in 1993—"before Amazon, eBay, Google, or Yahoo even existed"—with a modest brochure-type website. Two years later, in 1995, the Academy’s site was expanded to include poems, biographies, quizzes, and discussion forums. The domain Poets.org was registered by the Academy in 1996, and the first version of the current site was launched in April 1997 and subsequently redesigned in May 2000.

Good news, but a fresh new look, a beefed-up structure, revamped message boards? Sounds like Clara Bow and Sinclair Lewis in a meadow rendezvous. Block that metaphor!

By the way, at press time, the "Top 10 Most Popular Poets on Poets.org" were:

1. Langston Hughes
2. Emily Dickinson
3. Robert Frost
4. Walt Whitman
5. Shel Silverstein
6. Dylan Thomas
7. Sylvia Plath
8. Maya Angelou
9. William Carlos Williams
10. Gwendolyn Brooks

(Popularity based on Poets.org user searches)

See something you like? Then buy it! I mean him or her. Some of them come awful cheap.

Most Popular Nonprofit Poetry Website, Poets.org, Re-Launched by Academy of American Poets [eMediaWire]
Is it O.K. to Be a Luddite? [Thomas Pynchon in the NYTBR, 1984. "Except maybe for Brainy Smurf, it's hard to imagine anybody these days wanting to be called a literary intellectual, though it doesn't sound so bad if you broaden the labeling to, say, 'people who read and think.' Being called a Luddite is another matter..."]

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