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Elvis in Translation

Sometimes the blue in Blue Hawaii

gets lost. But Elvis’s eyes speak

pure Esperanto.

41,493

poems

4,155

poets

207

poetic terms

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01

By feeling

Grief, desire, revolt, wonder. Start where the poem meets your life.

Emotions →
02

By form

Follow the sonnet, ghazal, villanelle, ode, and every shape in between.

The glossary →
03

By constellation

Move between a poet, their influences, peers, translations, and afterlives.

Poets →

Selected

Poems worth returning to

Dawn turned on her purple pillow, …

Sara Teasdale

I can not tell you now; …

Carl Sandburg

Water …

C. D. Wright

A collective family myth …

Marilyn Nelson

by going you have to be and …

Kirsten Ihns

But that dashing, dauntless, delphic, diehard, diabolic cracker likes his fiction turned with a certain elegance and wit; and that anti-anti-anti-slum-congestion clublady prefers romance; …

Kenneth Fearing

If time is an arrow, what is its target …

Alicia Ostriker

Implausible fish bloom in the depths, …

Edith Södergran

The glossary

The language about poetry

From aubade to zuihitsu, 207 definitions of the forms, figures, and schools that shape the line.

Explore the glossary→
Accentual verseAccentual-syllabic verseAcmeismAlcaicAlexandrineAmbiguity