Whether you write poetry, read poetry, or simply want to widen your literary horizons, the Poetry Society of America has readings, seminars, and competitions intended to challenge and inspire. W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens were among the original members who envisioned a society that would not only be a local meeting place for poets, but a center from which a national poetry renaissance would emerge. Current members, such as John Ashbery, Rita Dove, Kimiko Hahn, Brenda Hillman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Stanley Kunitz, Sharon Olds, Robert Pinsky and Adrienne Rich carry on their great tradition.
Check out their Events page for upcoming readings and lectures around the country, including the Walt Whitman Sesquicentennial Series to be held in New York this July. On four consecutive Wednesdays, at the recently restored Brooklyn Historical Society, a generous host of richly diverse New York poets will read Leaves of Grass.
Their Resources page has hundreds of links to poetry journals, poetry publishers and small presses, literary organizations, independent bookstores, contests, and poetry colonies, conferences, and festivals.
The Poetry Society of America