Writing Aids

About.com: Poetry: More than 700 links to every aspect of writing poetry. Includes an extensive list of poetry contests as well as articles about writing for contests.
Academy of American Poets: From Poets.org, one of the most highly-respected and useful doorways to poetry and poets.
Arnaut & Karkur's ultimate on-line prosody resource: A humorous, often irreverent but useful guide to poetry forms, both open and closed, as well as to versification, rhyming, alliterative verse and more, including one of my favorite quotes: "'free verse' is mostly a label under which incompetence hides." Also available in book form.
For Poets--and Readers of Poetry: An introduction to the elements of poetry and to the techniques of poetic interpretation, for those who love to read and write poetry, but who sometimes find it intimidating or hard to understand.
Gale's Literary Resources: Tools, Terms, Tips for research or writing, reviews of latest reference resources, literature index; searchable. At the bottom of the page, click on Literary index to search for authors in the Index by name, birth date, death date, or nationality; or search by the title of a literary work to see who wrote it.
Historic Events and Birth-dates: Searchable by any date or any month of any year.
Martindale's Reference Desk: One of the 50 top-rated reference sites on the web. Wide variety of links to info including Language Center, Internet Center, Copyright, Patents & Trademarks, Electronic Media, and much more.
Orca's Poetry Pointers: VALUABLE! Practically a poetry course all by itself. Al Rocheleau, online poetry guru first with Atlantic Monthly then with the popular Orca forum, presents short essays on all the main elements of poetry: commonsense explanations, with examples.
pm poetry: Patrick Martin's Poetry Resource: Huge collection of poetry links continually updated. Seemingly infinite resource for worldwide information on poets, collections, organizations, publications and publishing, grant-making, etc.
Poetry Timeline: Important poetry-related events from 700CE to the present.
refdesk.com: "Fact checker for the Internet." a free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources. Wide range of links to reference sources, internet tools and sites -- you can even reach your email from here.
Suite 101: "Home to authoritative articles, commentary and opinions on hundreds of relevant topics," including large sections on Reading & Literature, Visual & Performing Arts, and Writing & Publishing.
Writer's Resource Center: Wide range of articles and links to serve the needs of writers in all fields. Large list of available writing jobs by category and by state. Extensive poetry section; the Thirty poems in 30 Days writing exercises alone are worth bookmarking this one.