Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles
available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Academy of
American Poets is a non-profit organization dedicated to the art of
poetry. The Academy was incorporated as a "membership corporation" in
New York State in 1934. It sponsors a portfolio of poetry awards, of
which the first was a fellowship created in 1946 to support a poet and
honor "distinguished achievement." In addition, the Academy fosters the
readership of poetry through outreach activities such as National Poetry
Month. In 1984 Robert Penn Warren noted that "To have great poets there
must be great audiences, Whitman said, to the more or less unheeding
ears of American educators. Ambitiously, hopefully, the Academy has
undertaken to remedy this plight."[1] In 1998, Dinitia Smith described
the Academy of American Poets as "a venerable body at the symbolic
center of the American poetry establishment."
