Stephanie Jacobsen
CRW 3321: Poetry II
Finding Contextual Information on Poets
This assignment asks you to research your assigned poet and to locate one audio/visual resource and one quality written source. Your sources may include:
- a background reading (literary review, scholarly article, or essay)
- a lecture or talk given by your poet on poetry (in written form) and/or an interview with the poet (text not video)
- a recording (audio or video) of your poet reading their work out loud.
This guide will help you identify different resources that contain these information sources.
Finding Reviews
There are many resources locating poetry reviews. Try these first:
- Book Review Digest Plus (1983-present)Reviews of children's, young adult, and adult fiction and non-fiction from 1981-present. The full text of most reviews are available online.
- New York Times Book Review (1997-present)Access to the New York Times Book Review is available through USF's subscription to the New York Times.
- JSTORJSTOR coverage spans a variety of disciplines, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The included content is comprehensive for archival and historical materials in the collection’s scholarly titles. The most recent 3-5 years of each journal is not available directly via JSTOR, however the USF Libraries provides access to current issues of a majority of these titles in other database and e-journal subscriptions.
Finding Scholarly Articles and Essays
As with reviews, there are many resources in the Library that you can use to find scholarly articles and essays. These two resources are excellent places to start:
- JSTORJSTOR coverage spans a variety of disciplines, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The included content is comprehensive for archival and historical materials in the collection’s scholarly titles. The most recent 3-5 years of each journal is not available directly via JSTOR, however the USF Libraries provides access to current issues of a majority of these titles in other database and e-journal subscriptions.
- QuicksearchSearch for books, journal articles, newspapers, videos and more from this one resource.
Finding Lectures and Interviews with Poets
The first place to check for interviews with and lectures given by contemporary poets is the poet's own website. Google your poet. Visit his/her website and see what the poet self-archives.
Not all poets have websites, and not all poets include all interviews on their websites. Make sure you also search in additional places, including:
- Literature Online (LION)Full-text access to literary databases that contain primary sources, reference works, and bibliographic information.
- Literature Resource CenterBiographical and bibliographical information aggregated from Contemporary Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, and Contemporary Literary Criticism Select.
- QuicksearchSearch for books, journal articles, newspapers, videos and more from this one resource.
Finding Recordings of Poet Readings
The best place to find videos of poets reading their own work is YouTube. Be a cautious consumer of YouTube, however, and ask:
- who uploaded this video?
- is this video what it claims to be?