Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

It seems this edition manages to be about all things artistic,  literary, and musical. I make no apologies. Where else will you find just seven sites to keep you busy most of the day?

✭ Washington, D.C., resident Aleid Ford, who is Cambridge-educated and has a masters in Italian Renaissance art from London's Courtauld Institute of Art, began in January, 2010, a 365-day project to discuss daily one artwork from our National Gallery of Art. You can catch up with her at Head for Art, where you'll find her blog; archives, by month and day, of all her posts to date (a superb resource); and her bespoke "Head for Art on Tour" travel services. Ford has been published extensively in Italy Magazine, The Italian Magazine, Polo Quarterly, and Expatriate Magazine; her list of articles in print is here. Be sure to stay up to date with Ford on Twitter.

✭ At the St. Columba College blog, SCCEnglish, you'll find a wonderful selection of short poetry podcasts: Patterns of Poetry. Among the poetry talks to date: titles (Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost) alliteration (Gerard Manley Hopkins), personification (Patrick Kavanagh), symbols (W.B. Yeats), onomatopoeia (Seamus Haney), cliche (Shakespeare and Carol Ann Duffy), simile (Sylvia Plath), and rhyme (Thomas Kinsella). The choice of illustrative poets is excellent. (My thanks to Ken Ronkowitz at Poets Online, where I first learned of this resource.)

✭ The New York Times Book Review has created an interactive — and very cool — literary map of Manhattan. 

✭ Poetry, essays, art, fiction, reviews, and interviews are just a few of the wonderful offerings you'll find at Terrain: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments. Terrain's blog is here. Follow on Twitter.

✭ At Art & Bible, which is available in English and French, you will find what is described as "the largest database that exists on the internet on pictorial art and the Bible". A recent edition is an alphabetized list of resources titled Art & Bible: Music. Also found on the site: virtual museums dedicated to the Bible. This site lets you search by biblical subject, text, artist, and word. (My thanks to ArtWay where I first saw references to these sites.)

✭ If you're a poet and have been wondering how to set your words to song, wonder no more. PBS and Independent Lens have debuted Off the Charts: Web Karaoke. In three easy steps, you get a chance to create your own unique song-poem. You provide the lyrics (your poem); Off the Charts provides the music. Go have some fun! (My thanks to Indiana Review's blog for this wonderful find.)

✭ Each issue of the quarterly literary journal The Pedestrian presents a single topic as examined in the personal essay form. The journal presents a mix of original work (including reprints and translations) by contemporary writers and work of such classic essayists as C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Adam Smith. The journal's first issue explores the theme of "empathy"; its second, "tools"; the third will look at "play" and the fourth at "quiet". The journal's current contest seeks submissions on "the subject of a particular game, sport, or other activity in which one plays"; the winning essay will be published in the February 2011 issue. Access to some text requires a print or online subscription.