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Website Covers the Best Modern American Poets
If reading your favorite poem leaves you yearning to know more about its author and its meaning, check out the new website created by a professor in the Department of English. MAPS—short for Modern American Poetry Site—is a clearinghouse for some of the best criticism on the best modern American poets.
Created by Cary Nelson, who is also the editor of the Anthology of Modern American Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2000), the 10,000-page website contains about everything required to master this literary field, except for the poems, which are strictly copyrighted. You'll find biographical information, illustrations (such as book jackets, broadsides, paintings, drawings, comics, and photographs), manuscripts, drafts of poems, bibliographies, historical background, statements on poetics, interviews, mini-essays on important issues pertinent to the poet, book reviews, and archival resources. Also included are syllabi so that the materials can be easily used as a teaching tool.
Nelson believes the site will fulfill a real need for access to these resources, particularly for students and researchers at colleges that lack extensive library resources like those found at Illinois.
Novelist Richard Powers, a colleague of Nelson's, described the site as a conversation among poets, scholars, and readers. "MAPS is constantly growing... it is extraordinary in its depth and breadth, and a one-of-a-kind resource for teaching modern American poetry."
Summer 2001