Net Verse
I appreciate that his site is written by someone that has been covering poetry on the internet for over 10 years. He has seen the evolution of poetry on this vehicle/platform. Since his articles were limited by his publisher to 300 words, they are a concise, quick read. Based on his introduction, though, I was expecting current articles, too, but they only spanned from ’96 to ’01. In his first article he talks about how the sites have changed from boring gray, and black to the “in vogue” colors with bells and whistles. We have come a long way. 12 year later, if someone comes across a completely boring looking site, they are like to just keep going. Aesthetics have become quite important in the world of the internet.
I was drawn to the article titled “Blimey. This Internet thing really works!” I think its fun to read about people reaction and shock to the internet. This article seemed to express his surprise that someone in Africa knew about his site and want to be included. Even from the beginning, the internet really was making this planet a smaller place.
And of course, a title like “Sex and Search Engines” grabbed my attention; aren’t these supposed to be about poetry? Here he mentions searching for poetry versus searching for sex on the internet, with sex getting about 350,000 hits and poetry getting about 220,000 hits. Curious, I did my own experiment. I agree with someone a comic I saw on TV that said no matter what is typed into a search engine, some of the results will include sites with sexual content. When I googled “sex” I came up with 863,000,000 results. Googling “poetry” only yielded 169,000,000 results. I think this is very telling. While the internet may not be the devil like my father once cautioned, it defiantly has its evils.
He also has a link to his own “site for poems and poetry resources” which I found to be a lot like the other poetry resource site covered in this class. It is organized well with quite a variety of sites.
Hypertext Poetry
I was surprised when I checked out the next site and discovered that it was from the same guy that did the net verse page. This page is just one of the links off of his homepage.
I really like that, since a Flash player is required for most of these links, he was kind enough to have this page set up to show what version of flash you have if you have flash player, and if it is working. I’ve never seen that as an automatic thing on a site; they usually just tell you to get it if you don’t have it. Being a little computer ignorant like I am, I don’t remember from one time to the next what I have on my computer so I was impressed with this site from the very beginning.
On to the hypertext links…
I stopped by his gallery of small hypertext poems hoping to find something small and palatable to help me appreciate the world of e-poetry a little more. What I found here hardly qualifies as poetry in my opinion; it just seems like creatively playing with text and movement on a computer. I can appreciate the creativity that went into them, and they are fun, but I think it weakens the genre of poetry to call this set of activities poems (I am only referring to this set of e-poetry; I get how much of e-poetry is, well, poetic).
I found “Like Smoke” however to be a very creative expression that was enhanced by the hypertext usage. I don’t think that these words would have been much of a poem without that tool.
His poems “Intersperse” and “Ugly” both went over my head. All I got when I clicked on “Ugly” was a black screen; I’m hoping that it just didn’t load properly. “Intersperse” seems like a neat concept with its jumbled text that, for lack of a better term, rejumbles with the click of a button; however, I was never able to get it into a form that was understandable (or maybe that’s the point).
Overall, this site helped me at least see some examples of hypertext poetry, whether I liked them all or not. I now see this as something doable and fun to experiment with. I may even introduce it to my students. It pushes the limits of traditional concrete poetry.
Poetry Markets
I decided to search the nonpayment links in the poetry market to give me some publishing ideas for this class since I have never even really tried to publish any of my work. I found some pretty interesting things like “54: Fiction and poetry that is 54 words no more, no less.” OK. Why 54? Why not, I guess. That’s a fund challenge but not what I’m looking for.
Moving past that, I get a little overwhelmed. While this site only shows 10 links at a time, it just keeps going and going. I think I would prefer a more concise list or a list that is organized into categories and types of publication. And most of the descriptions are a little vague. I mean, really, what’s the difference between on ezine that “publishes poetry and short fiction that appeals to young readers” and the next one. And why would “no restrictions” be a positive. Am I supposed to be proud to get published by a source that publishes anyone. At least with “54” I knew exactly what they were looking for and they had guidelines (be they seemingly arbitrary as they were). It seems a little overwhelming to try and search all of these one at a time to find the right one. I just don’t find this very user friendly.
About Me
- prematurely gray
- teacher, youth director, student...but my most important roles are father and husband
6 comments:
I like your research on googling sex and poetry. It just shows the minds and interests of people today. E poetry is cool, but I do encounter the problem of being able to see it correctly. Peter Howard is a man with good resources and he provides more than just poetry information. He includes technology info too.
Responses to Prematurely Grey
Your blog entries discussing Net Verse and Hypertext Poetry are extremely intriguing to writers and students. These sites demonstrate the aesthetics included in poetry and the presentation of them on the internet. To allow people to view internet works from across the world does display how small the world is as well as how the internet and its accessories are being utilized in the creation of poetry. Net Verse seems interesting to view to read the short articles about the evolution of poetry on the internet. Hypertext Poetry, on the other hand, is a necessity to view because we must stay abreast of the ever-evolving genre with its colors, flashing, images, and sounds. Witnessing the creative nature involved in e-poetry is awe striking though some e-poetry can be confusing or too flighty for people to understand.
I think that poetry markets are a great idea, because it encourages people to write and publish your own poems. Even though I taught history last year, I used poetry at least once a week. My students wrote poems about a particular event that they were studying. This site can be used in my classroom to encourage my students to not only write their own poems, but to publish them as well.
I too appreciate that this site was written by a person who has been very familiar with poetry online for many years. Who better to come to than a person who writes about it? I thought the best part about the site was that Peter Howard did the same thing that we are doing here. He researched online poetry and poetry websites and then was allowed 300 words to write about them. Is that not what we are doing here for this class? I thought that was really neat.
I enjoyed reading this first bit of information on 'Net Verse." I think it neat that you took the time to check into searching specific words to see if your discoveries were similar to what you found in your site. I agree that "sex" will probably continue being the foremost googled word. I think its because society wants to see what graphics are connected to that specific word. I am taking the course in SUM II of Multicultural Literature and Language. The instructor wants to incorporate graphics somehow in the course. Wonder if 'sex' will enter in?
Yes, the internet has come a long way. With online advertising becoming more and more prominent, aesthetics is becoming more and more important in web design like never before.
I too was a little disappointed in the Hypertext website. I think that there are a lot of great possibilities for e-poetry to explore, but it did seem like the quality of the poetry was a little low.
If you're interested in publishing, pretty much every poet should get the book Poet's Market. There are a lot of great magazines listed there, which take all sorts of poetry.
Post a Comment