Getting high school students interested in poetry can be a formidable task, so this helpful website created by the Library of Congress will be a welcome addition for many educators. Poetry 180 presents 180 poems, selected by Billy Collins (the current U.S. Poet Laureate), with the hope that high school students will read one of the poems a day, one for each school day in the academic year. All 180 poems are included on the site, and the list includes poems by contemporary poets such as Martha Collins, Jane Kenyon, George Bradley, Edward Field, and Thomas Lux. Another nice feature of the site is a brief list of suggestions by Collins on How To Read a Poem Out Loud, which includes a number of helpful hints on how to effectively deliver poems. Finally, visitors can sign the online guestbook here, or just view the entries from other visitors.
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