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.