Flattered and honored, I can’t help but note the subjectiveness of such lists, which is why I seldom do them. One poet’s top 100 is another poet’s bottom feeder net. But I do say I am in some good company.

Other poetry blogs that made the list include:

• Ted Kooser’s American Life In Poetry at No. 2
• Harriet: The Blog (The Poetry Foundation) at No. 4
• Read Write Poem at No. 9
• DIY Publishing at No. 15
• Poetry Hut at No. 16
• 32 Poems Magazine at No. 20
• Paul Hoover at No. 23
• Silliman at No. 25
• One Poet’s Notes at No. 32
• Very Like A Whale at No. 41
• Mark Doty at No. 50
• Mike Snider at No. 52
• PoemShape at No. 72
• Jack Prelutsky at No. 80

While I’d order these blogs in a much different way, I do agree with most of the selections. There are some irritations with this list, however.

For starters, Harriet is not a blogger. It’s the name of The Poetry Foundation’s blog and is written by a team of contributors. University Reviews Online could have done a little more homework. MetaCafe and WCBN-FM are not poetry blogs. While they include poetry videos and programming as a part of their public offerings, it’s a stretch to call them poetry blogs. While I appreciate the intent in including them on the list I’d much rather see blogs like Robert Lee Brewer’s, a real poetry blog, make the list. And I’m saddened by the absence of The Kenyon Review’s and Ploughshare’s blogs.

Nevertheless, I’m honored to be listed among the 100. Any idea where I fall? Not that it matters, but right behind Poetry Hound at position No. 29.

BTW, many of the blogs on this list can be read through the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

And if you’re interested, there’s a new book review at WCP. Ever wanted to learn how to make a living as a poet?

If you’re not familiar with Alltop.com then you may be familiar with one of its founders, Guy Kawasaki, a big-wig in the Web Business 2.0 world. It’s quite an honor to be selected as a member of the Alltop club, which also includes such poetic stalwarts as:

• Poets.org
• Cosmopoetica
• Blogsboro Poetry Club
• International Exchange For Poetic Invention
• 32 Poems
• Poems and Poetics
• Me~tronome
• They Shoot Poets – Don’t They?
• ThePoetryCollaborative.org
• Word Play Poetry Blog
• Read Write Poem

This is not a complete list of poetry sites included in the aggregation and I’m just as surprised at the poetry blogs that are not included:

• Silliman’s Blog
• Poetry Hut
• Poetry Hound
• The New Verse News
• Paul Hoover’s Poetry Blog
• Lime Tree (K. Silem Mohammad)
• The Best American Poetry
• Harriet
• One Poet’s Notes
• Poetic Asides
• And any of various poetry journal blogs (ie Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, et. al.)

There are a ton of great poetry blogs out there and while I may be in good company at Alltop, I’m not necessarily in the best company possible. Still, it’s an honor.

NOTE: Subscribe to over 30 poetry blogs with one tool.

1. The Vanity Blog – For lack of a better term, I’ll call the first category of poetry blog a “vanity blog”. The reason I call it a vanity blog is because the owner, the poet, simply uses the blog to post their own poems and they are not really much concerned with anything else. Vanity publishing has taken a new face from what it was a few years ago – it’s moved online and exists in two forms (digital and print self-publishing through services like AuthorHouse and Xlibris; and self-publishing through a blog). The second form of vanity publishing is the easiest and least costly. Many of these blogs are run for free because the blogger uses one of the free hosts like Blogger.com or WordPress.com, therefore there are no expenses involved (though I have seen one instance where the poet used Google AdWords to promote his blog and obtain new readers). Simply put, most of the vanity blogs exist solely for the poet’s own vanity. The poems are not that good and the readership is limited. However, there are a few poetry vanity blogs where the poems are not that bad, but I will leave that to your judgement.
2. The Marketing Blog – The second type of blog that you’ll find is what I call the marketing blog. These blogs are usually maintained by individual poets, journals and publications, and other poetry organizations. The purpose of these blogs is to promote the works of the poets, events of an organization, or to discuss issues related to a particular journal (such as contests, promotion of the poets published in the journal, deadlines, new issues, etc.). Some of the marketing blogs that I’d recommend are:
   • The Kenyon Review Blog
   • Harriet
   • Blogalicious
   • 32Poems
   • One Poet’s Notes
   • Poetic Asides
   • World Class Poetry
3. The Poetry Journal Blog – Some blogs act like poetry journals. That is, they have submission guidelines and accept poetry submissions from the general public then they publish the ones they like. Some noteworthy poetry journal blogs include:
   1. The New Verse News
   2. I’d love to hear other blogs that are poetry or literary journals
4. Poetry News – Another type of poetry blog you’ll find online is the blog that promotes poetry in general and that acts as a news resource for poets, delivering upcoming contests, new poetry journal announcements, etc. Here are a few poetry resource blogs I’d recommend:
   1. DIY Publishing
   2. NewPages
   3. Poetry Hound
   4. Poetry Hut
5. Philosophy Blogs – The last type of poetry blog you’ll find online is what I call a philosophical blog. Its primary purpose is to advance a particular philosophy of poetics or to discuss poetics in general. There aren’t as many of these types of blogs online as I’d like to see, but there are a few, including World Class Poetry Blog, and in addition to WCP I’d recommend these:
   1. Silliman’s Blog
   2. Lemon Hound
   3. William Watkins

I’m sure there are blogs that I’m leaving out in each category. I’d like it if you posted your own favorite blogs in each of these categories. We could add one other category – the Hybrid Blog – but I’m afraid that would be a huge list. The Hybrid Poetry Blog is one that could fall into more than one category above, such as the World Class Poetry Blog, which exists partly to discuss poetics in general and partly to market myself as a poet and my own works, including the sister site World Class Poetry (practically speaking, however, its purpose is primarily philosophical and secondarily marketing). Other blogs, such as Poetic Asides, serve similar functions.

I hope you find additional blogs to read here in this list and while I realize it’s a rather short list of mostly popular blogs that you’re likely already familiar with, I’d hope the benefit is to help us see how we can use blogging as a tool to further the cause of poetry. By categorizing the types of blogs currently online we may form new categories or expand upon the categories we now have. I’d like to see more poetry journals as blogs and more discussions of poetics taking place on blogs. Any takers?