What a great combination! April is National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month (at the Smithsonian, anyway.) We have books and audio on both subjects on display at the library this month.
Poetry: There are a lot of great poetry sites that have been revamped within the last year. Check out The Poetry Archive from the UK (you can listen to poetry if you have RealPlayer installed), Poets.org from the Academy of American Poets (you can sign up to have a newly-published poem emailed to you every day during April), Poetry Foundation (you can print out a poem “for the fridge”), and the Library of Congress’ Poetry site, where you can find news about current Poet Laureate (and New Hampshire resident) Donald Hall and a whole lot more.
Jazz: The Smithsonian Jazz site has plenty to look at: lectures, recordings, exhibits. UNH has its own Library of Traditional Jazz with recordings, books, and periodicals. Some of these can be borrowed through interlibrary loan. More worth looking at: Ken Burns’ Jazz, companion site to the PBS series; Drop Me Off in Harlem, the Kennedy Center’s site about the Harlem Renaissance features musicians; and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s JazzCast, where you can download podcasts for iTunes, play video (with RealPlayer), and listen to Wynton Marsalis’ weekly radio show (also with RealPlayer.)