Poets House Launches New Online Public Access Catalog

Poets House is pleased to announce the launch of its online public access catalog, making its comprehensive collection of poetry searchable by readers and writers across the globe. The culmination of many years of work, the new catalog provides poets and poetry readers access to the Poets House collection—more than 50,000 volumes of poetry—in a way that was not possible before.

Clicking on the “Library” link above takes you to a description of the Reed Foundation Library at Poets House and the catalog search bar. The catalog incorporates bibliographic records including:

• Easy access to new titles and items recently added to the Poets House library;
• In addition to author and title searches, users can search items by form, like ‘haiku’ or ‘sonnet’ or subjects from love and death to nature and more
• Over 20 years of books from the Poets House Showcase, our annual exhibit of all of the year’s new books from publishers of every size from micropresses to commercial houses, from chapbooks to coffee table editions, many now discoverable by Showcase year.;
• Thousands of recordings, the majority of which are one-of-a-kind recordings of readings and conversations that have taken place at Poets House and other New York City venues and hundreds of radio broadcasts from the mid-20th century.

A visitor to the catalog looking for a book by Robert Frost will find a wide array of published material, including books of poetry, recordings of his readings, biographies, anthologies inspired by his work and books of criticism, along with recordings of Poets House talks and panel discussions dedicated to Frost’s life and work, and our on-line exhibit of a collection of the Christmas cards he sent to friends. A search for a more contemporary poet such as Adrienne Rich or Robert Creeley will find bibliographic records of their poetry as well as recordings of events at Poets House in which they participated.

Explore the treasures of the Poets House Library on-line today!