Finding Poetry in the Dewey Decimal System

I'm not going to suggest that any non-poetry-reader start buying random poetry books to try and get a handle on the whole thing (but if you were, this would be a great place to start); that's why the Romans invented local libraries. (Collections of scrolls were sometimes kept at Roman spas, leading to that great discovery - reading in the bath.*)

And although it would be easier if Poetry had it's own section adjacent to Fiction in a corner with some cosy beanbags and perhaps a window for some natural light, it doesn't, so here's where to start looking on the shelves.

Poetry in general is found at 811 with English (and Australian and American) Poetry at 821. If you can read them, there's German Poetry at 831, French at 841, Italian at 851, Spanish at 861, Latin at 871, Classical Greek at 881 and all the other languages smooshed into the 890's. My local also has a section of Rhymes next to the Junior books, which is the place to go for Nursery Rhymes and poetry by Judith Viorst.

For advice on writing poetry you could look around 808 (or go back along the shelves to 152 'Self-help').

There is a good overview of the Dewey Decimal Classification system on Wikipedia. (There's an official page, but it's pretty inpenetrable to non-librarians.)

If you want to have a go at cataloging your own collection, this page has a listing of the 1000 top-level call number subdivisions.

In the unlikely event that your library uses some cataloguing system other than that invented by Melvil Dewey I'm afraid I can't help you, but that's why the ancient Greeks invented librarians.

*An expensive habit if carried out with library books.