Friday, June 7, 2013

Poetry About Outer Space

Helix Nebula - Unraveling at the Seams
Since a handful of people keep landing on my little blog trying to find poems about the final frontier, I figured I'd help you, dear poetry seeker, by sending you in the right direction with some useful links. I hope you find this helpful. If you find any other great sites feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll update this post on occasion. I wish you all a happy intergalactic poetry adventure!

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1) The Poetry Foundation is a great starting place when you are looking for poems about a certain topic, written by a certain poet, written during a particular time period, in a particular style, and more. I've already searched for poems by Subject: Nature: Stars, Planets, Heavens, which gives you over 200 results. You can continue to narrow down this search by using the handy search feature on the left. For example, if you wanted outer space poems written in the 19th century or kid-friendly outer space poems (under "Other Options" then select "are good for children"), you can filter for either or both of those. You can also look for examples of a particular type, form, or even literary device.

2) The American Academy of Poets also has a less extensive archive of poems. You'll want to select the Advanced Search option from the main page, then use the "Theme" drop down and select "Space" to find about 20 poems. Again, I've done the search already, because I'm cool like that. You also have the option to browse by title and first line, if you're looking for a particular poem.

3) The Poetry Out Loud website has an online anthology of poems that qualify for their national annual recitation contest. This archive is alphabetical by title or poet and has no browsing or filtering functions. You can, however, search the whole site using the search box in the top right corner of the site. If you search for things like "stars" or "space" or "planet" you will find links to poems, though not all of them will be. But don't overlook some of the video performances from past finalists; these have a power all their own and are worth at least a viewing. You can also listen to poetry recitations.

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