We’ve had an intense week on the blog. It was my first week back to blogging each day. We talked about everything from engagements to suffering, from NSA surveillance to harshing everyone’s 4th of July buzz.

So let’s have some fun.

I fully believe that poetry is one of the most powerful forces in our world today. When engaged with fully, it can get around our normal defenses and speak to our souls like few other things can. (It could even convert you to Christianity.) I also try my hand at it time to time.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you all two unexpected places you can find amazing poetry to brighten up your Friday and send you into the weekend right.

Google Suggested Searches

There is an amazing tumblog called Google Poetics that chronicles poetry that is inadvertently made by Google’s auto-suggest list that pops up after you start to search something. Some of them are poignant, like the one above. There are even some long-form “Google Poems” made up of several searches, like this one.

But of course, like any good tumblog, the best ones are always the funny ones.

Book Spine Poetry

This is my personal favorite. A while back, someone told me about this idea. People take books either on their shelf or at the library, and then stack them so their titles read like poetry. At the top of this post, and directly above, you can see a couple of favorites of mine.

A simple Google search can lead you to countless archives and galleries of the pictures. The phenomena started (as far as anyone can tell) in 1993 with a project called Sorted Books by an artist named Nina Katchadourian, and it evolved from there.

Now you can find curated “Best of” galleries, or even annual, seemingly endless galleries for your viewing pleasure. So go click those and enjoy.

So go read some poetry, make some poetry, and be sure to post links to your favorites (or originals) below.

[top image taken from artist Nina Katchadourian‘s Sorted Books project]