The Modern American Poetry Site is devoted to the teaching and study of modern and contemporary American poetry with particular emphasis on original and excerpted scholarship about key poems, poets, and contexts. This criticism is accompanied by images, media, and the poems themselves.
Die Informationssammlung zur amerikanischen Lyrik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts hat ihren Urpsrung in eine Textsammlung in Buch-Form:
MAPS was initially created in 1999 at the University of Illinois as a companion site to the first edition of the Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford UP, 2000). The anthology contains poems by hundreds of different modern and contemporary poets, including several poets—among them women, minorities, and progressives—who previously had not been published in anthology form. Cary Nelson and the original advisory board of notable scholars realized that readers would benefit from having more information readily available and accessible to them than what a book could hold.
Starting with the original Illinois site, Bartholomew Brinkman developed the updated site in the Spring of 2013 to allow more in depth and modern functions through Drupal, an open source content management system that allows for a great deal of modularity and flexibility in presentation and purpose. The new MAPS site features several state-of-the-art features beyond those available on the original site. MAPS, with the help from grants and student interns, has grown over the past decade to more than 30,000 pages of biographies, critical essays, syllabi and images relating to 161 poets. The site still urges you to read the books from which the excerpts were taken; making sure all possible information is gathered and researched.
MAPS is a part of an innovative and intellectual community of students and scholars. It acts as a medium to allow fluid conversation between individuals in which new ideas and criticism combine to help influence readers and learners. It is a learning environment and resource for the study of modern and contemporary American poetry. A user of the site can choose between various approaches to learn and experience poets and poems. With use of biographical information, criticism, and other materials, MAPS involves processes that connect poets in many ways: biographically, geographically, thematically, and historically. The site is not limited to its own information; external links grant users a more wide spread glance at poetry and can help motivate readers to engage with other readers. The site includes audio, other media files, essays, images of poets and book jackets, bibliographies, archives, teaching resources, and more. The convenience of having connections to outside sites aids in ones effort to research and compile facts and criticism. MAPS also encourages its users to submit criticism and or to search for information that MAPS has use for. This ever-growing site is a user’s guide to poetry and history that runs on the collaborative process.
Es gibt mehrere Einstiege in die Sammlung:
- All poems: eine filterbare Liste aller verzeichneten Gedichte (Stand Mai 2023: rund 700)
- All Criticisms: eine filterbare Liste aller verzeichneten Sekundärtexte (Stand Mai 2023: 2.625)
- Discover Poets: „Discover a new poet (or re-discover an old favorite) from our collection of modern and contemporary poets.“
- Discover schools of poetry: „Learn more about modern and contemporary schools of poetry and browse poets by poetic school.“
Die Herausgeber:innen freuen sich über neue Beiträge. Informationen dazu gibt es in den FAQ.