A new poetry resource

I recently received an email from Diana Collins, one of the founders of Famous Poets and Poems, kindly thanking me for maintaining a blog where people can learn something new and useful about poetry.

I never thought of my blog teaching something new and useful about poetry, other than sharing those myriad sights, sounds and thoughts that this elusive creature I call the "creative self" eventually turns into poems. Along with what I hope will eventually be poems. You can always read the finished products on the main Contemplating August site.

Diana's email made me realize two things:

• First, she and fellow poetry fans Helen Jaworski and and Monica Vesela have created a very nicely done poetry resouce of over 500 poets and 20,000 poems, along with poets' biographies and pictures. (I have been lamenting the dearth of classic and modern poetry reference sites, increasingly abandoned for poetry contests and posting-communities which generate more traffic, the basic staple of web-dom.)
• Second, maybe there's more that I can do to teach my readers about poetry, particularly the technical elements that every poet should at least know...even if they choose to ignore them (and they can, as long as they know what those elements are.) A sort of "Poetry 101." Since I've done this in e-mail form before, I'm motivated to take on the challenge of putting together a primer on poetic elements. I've started on Lecture 1, which will be out soon. Thanks, Diana!