James Earl Jones credited a love of poetry for helping him overcome a problem with stuttering, and many others have spoken to a great love for the power of reading verse aloud. The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation are encouraging high school students to memorize and perform great poems through the Poetry Out Loud initiative. While the program is intended for high school...

Poetry Out Loud, which is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, is a contest in which students memorize and recite poems. They start first in the classroom, then recite school-wide, then regionally, then by state and, finally, at the National Finals. The Teaching Resources section of the site features tips for teaching Poetry Out Loud, lesson plans and a...

The Bollingen Prize for Poetry at Yale University was established in 1948 by Paul Mellon, and over the past five decades has honored some of the most revered names in American poetry. The prize is awarded every two years for the best volume of poetry published in those years or for a poet's lifetime achievement in his or her art. Some of those honored over the years include Wallace Stevens,...