1. Teacher-librarian M Ekdahl 2007
Sources of Poetry
Teacher-librarian M Ekdahl
2007

2. Different kinds … Lyric Narrative Haiku Sonnets Found Concrete Slam
Hip hop

3. Poetry is Pervasive – it’s Everywhere …
Songs
Ads
Jingles
Obituaries
Books
Magazines and journals
“the field” … by chance … “found”

4. It’s Online – or is it???
A search of google on July 17, 2007, for “poetry” indicates there are about 146 million sites
By my calculations, it would take three long lifetimes, at the rate of one site per minute, to view all the sites.

5. Quality of online sources?
When using anything online, it is important to remember:
Anyone can publish anything on the net.

6. You can limit your online search …
Funny poems – only 2.7 million
Love poems – 4.19 million
Tree poems – 2.23 million
Dog poems – 2.4 million
Tupac poems – over 1 million
Science poems – 2.28 million!!
e. e. cummings poems – sites
Frost poems – million

7. How about a poetry database?
Databases are organized searchable information sources
They form part of the “invisible net” – you cannot access them by google, only by rights of “membership” (subscription)

8. Let’s look at Granger’s Poetry D/base
On a school computer, type in webcat and click onto the Databases tab.
Choose Granger’s Poetry online (in third column, Web Resources).
Userid: 39gl Password: library

9. Tree poem? First line search … I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree …
Joyce Kilmer
( )

10. “Lovely” by Jon Scieszka in Science Verse
I think that I ain’t never seen
A poem ugly as a spleen
A poem that could make you shiver,
Like 3.5 … pounds of liver.

11. Ogden Nash – funny poet I think that I shall never see A billboard
lovely as a
tree
Indeed, unless
the billboards
fall
I’ll never see a
tree at all

12. Poems about dogs?
There are 376 full-text poems about dogs and 2 about prairie dogs
For example:
Now that he has a child
he knows all the local dogs
by name.
* Citation is included: Senryu, Karai. “Now that he has a child.” The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry. 25 July 2006.

13. Famous poets?
Try:
Americans like Bukowski, Frost, Dickinson, cummings, Ferlinghetti …
Internationally known poets like Shakespeare, Keats, Rossetti, Brownings, Neruda …

14. Canadian Content ? Weak but growing … Check for Birney, Atwood
You won’t find Cohen, etc.

15. As for Tupac, Rap, and Hip Hop …
Why not try a book?
Seek only that which has been reviewed and published
Anyone can call what they write “a poem” and publish it online!

16. THE END