Edgar Allan Poe Mini-Feature

In addition to the Collected Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, and numerous Poetry Xtras notes and commentary about Poe's work, we have also added three of Poe's essays about poetry and writing:

• The Poetic Principle
• The Philosophy Of Composition, and
• Old English Poetry

Poetry Contest Deadline Change

Since we'll be away for most of the holiday season (until the second week of January, anyway) we've decided to push back the contest deadline until 11:59PM on 6 January 2005:

Poetry Contest Details

This change will not affect the announcement of the winner - that will still happen in late January.

We've received a number of solid entries so far but the contest is by no means over. We'll be reading new submissions right up until the deadline - so if you've been waiting to submit, now's the time!

We also may be adding a second and third prize, the amount or quantity of prizes will depend on how many entries we receive - our goal is to add the entry fees received to the prize pool.

New Poems Added - WCW, Moore, Butler, Mallarmé, Robinson, & More!

We're well on our way to our goal of 10,000 poems in the database by the end of 2004.

This week we've added a number of new poems by:

• William Carlos Williams


• Marianne Moore


• Stéphane Mallarmé


• Ellis Parker Butler


• The Collected Poetry of Edwin Arlington Robinson

and more!

New Theme - Christmas Cheer

In celebration of the holiday season we have added a new theme: Christmas Cheer.

If you have been using the default theme you should see the new Christmas Cheer theme immediately. If you're using an alternate theme, you may switch to the Christmas Cheer theme [hint, click here].

Christmas and Holiday Poems Added

We are pleased to present a new feature on Poetry X: Guided Poetry Tours. Each poetry tour will provide an orderly path through the large archive of poems and articles that are available on Poetry X.

Our first Guided Poetry Tour is Holiday Poems. In this tour you'll find links to various Christmas and other holiday poems, carols, songs, and hymns that are located in the Poetry X Archives.

Look for more tours on various genres, themes, and styles coming soon.

Poetry X RSS and Atom Syndication Feeds

By popular demand we've added some XML syndication feeds this week. So far we've added a feed for our news items (like this very item) but in the coming week we'll add one for new poets, articles, etc.

You can get each feed (just the one so far, of course) in three different "flavours":

RSS 2.0
RSS 1.0 / RDF, and
Atom

All of the feeds will be available in the footer (i.e. at the bottom) of any page. If you don't understand what I'm talking about then this feature isn't for you. We'll be adding a tutorial eventually that demonstrates how to use these feeds for fun and profit. In the meantime, just know they're a way to keep track of updates to the site.

Also, to make feed entries and new updates easier to track, we're also going to be splitting up the news entries by items rather than making one big entry for the entire week's updates (although it's questionable whether this entry breaks that rule or not - is this a separate item from the news feeds?).

In any case, updates are frequent and we don't want to leave anyone behind wondering what is and isn't new.

You can of course also add an Atom feed to this very blog.

Poetry Contest! The Poetry X Prize for Poetry

By popular demand, we are pleased to offer our first poetry contest. The Poetry X Prize for Poetry offers $100 and publication on Poetry X for the best previously unpublished original poem. Entry fee is only $4 per poem and you may enter as many original (i.e. your own work) unpublished (i.e. NOT YET published - although poems posted on discussion forums are acceptable). I'm the judge, but all judging will be blind (i.e. I won't see your name until I've selected a winner - just the poem title and poem text).

The deadline has been extended to 31 December 2004.

Full details:

Poetry X Poetry Contest Details

Blogging off PoetryX.com

On the suggestion from one of our visitors, I've decided to start an update blog here rather than just listing the updates at Poetry X.

There are several reasons for doing so, but the most important is that within the blogging community people use this site to easily add links to their "blogrolls" and can more easily link to THIS page than they can to our web site at PoetryX.com.

So starting in December 2004 I'll be adding updates (and sometimes some poems and commentary) here in addition to posting a news item entry at Poetry X.

If you like the site (or just like reading my ramblings about site updates) please link to this blog - and let me know! I'll return a link as a way of saying thanks.