If you spend your whole day on the computer, this is definitely something worth looking into. Though it's not a replacement for leisure reading, it's a great way to get through some of those reads you may have been putting off.
Showing posts with label recommendation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recommendation. Show all posts
DailyLit Brings Books to Your E-mail Inbox
If you're like me, you spend a great deal of your day sifting through hundreds of tweets, blog posts, e-mails, and Facebook posts. In between, all of us manage to squeeze in a book or two over the course of the week, and if we're lucky, even a few poems. Wouldn't it be great if you could get some reading done while you're slogging through all those e-mails and RSS feeds? That's where innovative service DailyLit comes in.
As their helpful graphic above illustrates, DailyLit takes short stories and novels, cuts them into easily digestible pieces, and feeds them to you through RSS or e-mail. Many of the newer books require a small fee [usually around $7], but there are over 800 free books available. If you're already a regular Google Reader user, it seems like the RSS option is really the way to go. And the service even allows you to sign in with your Google, Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID account.
If you spend your whole day on the computer, this is definitely something worth looking into. Though it's not a replacement for leisure reading, it's a great way to get through some of those reads you may have been putting off.
If you spend your whole day on the computer, this is definitely something worth looking into. Though it's not a replacement for leisure reading, it's a great way to get through some of those reads you may have been putting off.
Overview: The Poetry Foundation
The Internet contains a wealth of information about poetry, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. For those who want a simple place to start, I recommend the website of the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation. If you’re not yet familiar with this organization, they describe themselves as “an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry and to place it before the largest possible audience.” The Foundation’s website is a treasure trove of resources and information devoted to this purpose and is divided into five sections: Features, Archive, Programs, Foundation, and Poetry Magazine.
The Features section contains articles on a variety of poetry-related topics as well as links to news items from sources worldwide, and a blog maintained by members of the Foundation’s staff. It also contains a list of recent poetry bestsellers in the categories of “contemporary,” “anthology,” “children’s,” and “small press.” The most interesting items found in the Features section—in my opinion, anyway—are the five video series and eight audio podcasts the Foundation offers; both informative and entertaining, they’re definitely worth checking out.
In the Archive section, the Foundation maintains a gallery of poetry-related photos, cartoons, posters, and other media suitable for viewing or printing, a selection of online analyses (reading guides) of various poems, and links to hundreds of other websites that poets and poetry aficionados might find useful, including publishers, blogs, poetry organizations, reference resources, and more. Also lodged within the Archive section is the Foundation’s “Poetry Tool,” which is, essentially a searchable database of poems and poets, neatly broken down into categories and subcategories; it also serves as a search engine for the entire website, making it possible to find the articles, podcasts, and videos devoted to the topics you want.
The Poetry Foundation sponsors a number of programs promoting poetry, and these can easily be found in the Programs section of the site. Here you can learn about the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute, the purpose of which “is to convene interested parties to champion common solutions for the benefit of poets and the art form of poetry,” as well as the Foundation’s Poetry Media Service, which provides book reviews, general articles, interviews, and profiles to newspapers and online publications in an attempt to bring poetry to the attention of the general populace. In addition, there is a page that catalogs poetry events in the Foundation’s home base of
The Foundation section of the website includes the obligatory “About” page, contact information, various announcements, and a sign-up form for the Foundation’s newsletter. For dedicated poets, it also includes information about awards, prizes, and fellowships offered by the Foundation.
Finally, the Poetry Magazine section features a selection of articles from current and past issues of Poetry as well as a subscription form and information on submitting your work for publication.
I consider the Poetry Foundation website a fundamental resource for poets and others who enjoy poetry. If you have never visited the site, or have given it only a cursory view in the past, I urge you to take a look at all it has to offer and make as much use of it as you can.
Feedly: A Useful Tool for Poetry and Everything Else
One of the ways I get a lot of the information that I share on Twitter is through RSS [Really Simple Syndication] feeds. RSS is a format through which sites can be subscribed to, and new content can be aggregated and viewed at a central location, called an RSS reader. Google's online product for reading RSS feeds, called Google Reader, is almost unparalleled in its efficiency and ease of use. I've been using Google Reader for a long time to monitor my favorite news sites, blogs, and poetry sites. Recently I came across a great source that enhances the usefulness of my Google Reader feeds.
Feedly is a Firefox add-on [Thankfully, it works with Firefox 3.5!] that syncs with your current Google Reader account, but gives you a much richer, social reading experience. Above you can see my Feedly cover page from a couple days ago. It shows, in a magazine-like style, some of the most popular recent stories from the RSS feeds I am subscribed too. In the left column it shows which feeds have new stories, the middle two columns include some of my feed categories, and the far right column has my recent Twitter stream.
The key to Feedly is its Twitter, Friendfeed, and Digg integration. By glancing at an expanded story, you can see how many times its been liked on Friendfeed, how many diggs it has, and how many times its been shared on Google Reader. With a single click you can share the content on a plethora of social sites as well. This add-on has become my Firefox start page and has revolutionized the way I use and think of RSS feeds.
So what does all this have to do with poetry? Well as you can see, I have a poetry section for my feeds that allows me to monitor specific sites. But beyond that, Feedly offers a search feature that really kicks things into high gear. When you type a term into the page's search box, it gives you the option to "explore" or "search". Search just gives you results from your own feeds like Google Reader, but Exploring a term like "poetry" gives you a page like this:
Update [10-19-09]: Though still in early alpha testing, Feedly is currently porting its fantastic product to to both Chrome and Safari browsers as well as Firefox. Follow @feedly_chrome and @feedly_safari for more information.
The Wednesday Five
Another week has passed, and here we’ve arrived at the next five poetry recommendations:
I like to think of this site as Facebook for writers. It’s basically a social networking/blog-hosting community that is geared toward poets and authors of all kinds. The Contests section of the site is the most original part, allowing anyone who has an account to issue various writing challenges. If you’re looking to build a community with like-minded poets, this is the place for you.
2. Book Beast
While not technically a poetry site, this newish section of The Daily Beast’s popular news site is a one-stop shop for all kinds of literary information. Book Beast was one of the first places to break the story that Hudson River hero Sully Sullenberger would get a two-book deal, one of which would be a collection of poetry.
I must admit that I am slightly ambivalent about this pick, though I like it enough to mention it here. This very simple, Canadian html site is basically an application to be included on this tightly-controlled web publishing platform. While not taking advantage of some of the benefits that Web 2.0 has to offer, I like Fresh Water Writing because it’s old school. There is something to be said for having your work vetted, edited, and published on the web by an impartial third party.
It’s hard to be a poet on the web these days without quickly being introduced to this fantastic site. They offer so much content it’s difficult for me to summarize here. Suffice to say that if you need a one-stop source for poetry text, media, and news, you’ll find no better place on the web than this mainstream compendium.
This collaborative blog/poetry resource is managed by my new friend Deb Scott. This is a great project that’s fairly simple to get involved in: every Friday at GMT-5 a new poetry prompt is issued, and readers respond to the prompt a week later with original poems which are discussed on the site. It’s a great way to join a community which has a vested interest in helping you with your writing process.
That’s all for now! This Friday look for my review of the Touch Poet app for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
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