Century-Old Poetry Society of America Finds Fulfillment Online

You may not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but poets have no trouble learning new things. There's no better example than the New York-based Poetry Society of America, which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The PSA has long been a great supporter of poems and poets across the country, and in the past few years it has embraced the online world wholeheartedly.

Hey! Look Over There! And There!: The Issue of Multiple Posts

The end of 2009 is fast approaching, and I am excitedly working on a number of projects as we prepare to enter the new year. The PT podcast is still at large, but I hope it shall finally arrive in 2010. And I'm also preparing to pop up in a few other blogs and publications in the coming months.

With that said, there's a great story on poetry and tech over at the fantastic Vroman's Bookstore Blog. The article discusses the multi-platform lit mag Electric Literature, which we covered when it first debuted. Patrick, over at Vroman's, points out an issue involving Electric Literature and multiple posts. Here's a quick excerpt:

'The hope was that, by syndicating the story across so many different accounts, Electric Literature would reach a wider audience.

It didn’t work. There was too much overlap among the social networks of the various co-publishers, leading to many people seeing the same tweet several times. The book world has responded at first with confusion, and then moved quickly to anger, scorn and ridicule.'

Nothing like a little book-related tech drama to finish out the year. Be sure to check out the full article at Vroman's, in which Patrick digs deep into this issue.

Thanks to all of you for sticking with Paradise Tossed in 2009. We look forward to continuing to provide insights into the growing world of poetry and technology in the year to come. See you in 2010!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/spencerfinnley/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Twitterature Gives Fictional Characters Something to Write Home About

Apologies for the extended absence last week. As some of you know I was having significant computer issues and was unable to get to a substitute machine. However, the good news is that during the downtime I was able to complete the first podcast, and I should have it posted late this week if all goes well.

I've written about Twitter quite a lot on this blog. The microblogging site has quickly become the media darling of the tech set over the last year, and many creative people have initiated a number of interesting poetic projects within the Twitterverse.  In the interest of diversifying content, we haven't covered every single Twitter-and-poetry-related story that has come along. But there's one that's been receiving a lot of attention lately, and I simply can't pass it up.

I'm talking about Twitterature, a new collection published by Penguin Books comprised of the tweets of Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin. In short, what they've done is take classic literature and summarize it in 20 tweets of 140 characters each. This Yahoo! article from back in October gives a more detailed summary.

The tweets these guys have come up with are both humorous and, occasionally, insightful.

Middle School English Teacher Uses iPhones as Teaching Tools

There's an episode of Boy Meets World in which 'cool' English teacher Mr. Turner assigns hapless Cory Matthews to read an issue of X-Men along with The Odyssey. [I seem to be on a sitcom kick this week.] Besides establishing Mr. Turner as the kid-savvy anti-Feeny, the episode was a demonstration that learning can respect both long-honored traditions and new trends.

Well, it turns out that a North Carolinian schoolteacher is trying the same tack, updated for the 21st century.

Collaborative Poetry and the Storytelling Techniques of Neil Gaiman

Yesterday at noon, Neil Gaiman, celebrated author of The Sandman series, American Gods, Coraline, and more, sent out a single message from his Twitter account, @neilhimself. As io9 reported, what followed would be thousands of messages in reply to Gaiman's prompt. The first thousand are currently being compiled and edited into a massive collaborative short story.

Collaboration is a social media buzzword, and here at Paradise Tossed we've reported on a number of interesting collaborative writing projects. Gaiman is probably the biggest name writer to get in on the act, and on the occasion of this tech-savvy author's high profile project we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the whole idea of collaborative storytelling.

Hashtagged Lit: How to Find Things to Read on Twitter

Back in March, just after this blog first started, John posted about the #haiku hashtag on Twitter. For those who missed that post or are new here and still aren't familiar with the insider terminology of the popular microblogging and chat site, a hashtag is a crude form of metadata by which Twitter users tag tweets with a topic. Those searching for such a topic can then easily find the tweet marked with that hashtag. For example, those who wish to read the steady stream of haiku poetry being produced on Twitter can run a search algorithm including the "#haiku" hashtag, and all the tweets marked with it will come up in that reader's search results.

Haiku isn't the only literary format suited to the 140 characters that Twitter has set as its limit. Recently, I've begun following other users who are quite adept at a similar Japanese form of poetry known as tanka.

Lazyfeed: A Great Tool for Poetry and Everything Else

There are thousands of poetry blogs on the Internet, and more are created every day. All around the world, people are self-publishing their creative work in what has become a revolution in the world of poetry publishing. It's impossible to keep up with all the new poetry that's put online each day. Traditional tools, like subscribing to every blog via RSS, can create an overwhelming barrage of reading material, more than a single person can get through. And even if you do subscribe to a lot of poetry blogs, how do you find new ones? Some poets are kind enough to post their work on Twitter, but this doesn't work well for longer poems and still has the same problem of discovery.

Wouldn't it be great if there was a tool where new articles from poetry blogs would come to you with minimal effort, and all in real time? Enter Lazyfeed: a relatively new tool in the world of real-time blog searching. The concept is relatively simple. Lazyfeed allows you to search the internet by tags on blog posts. It brings up the most recent posts that have the tag you're looking for. There's been a considerable amount of buzz about this service over the past couple weeks, most of it stemming from the enthusiasm of tech blogger Louis Gray. Here's a screencast from the site's creator that provides a more in-depth summary of the service:



Obviously, Lazyfeed is useful for any number of topics, but it's a great way to solve this aforementioned problem of finding and reading a large number of poetry blogs. By simply adding "poetry" as on of your saved tags, you can use Lazyfeed to retrieve all of the new posts written on the topic. From there it's very simple to share your finds on Twitter or Facebook, and to add your new favorite poetry blogs to an RSS reader. If you're looking to explore the ever-expanding world of poetry blogs, then Lazyfeed is definitely a tool for you.

Poems on the Open Road: Writing While Traveling

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I'm currently on a small road trip to the East Coast. While packing, I decided to leave my larger Moleskine notebook, which contains most of my creative work, at home in favor of the smaller, more compact model I have. The choice reminded of an article I wrote for this blog back in April, in which I discussed the differences between a low and high tech approach to writing.

Since then, I've had a bunch of conversations with readers about the different tools they employ when writing poetry. Unsurprisingly, most are big pen-and-paper fans, but there are some who say they only compose electronically now. I was delighted to discover that a fair number of people are still using typewriters, but we all know that those don't travel well.

All poetry is tied to experience in one way or another, and the way we record those experiences says a lot about us as individual writers. Some people prefer to write as they go, while others take in all they can and save the writing for afterwards. To quote William Wordsworth: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." Whether you agree or not, Wordsworth's preference is clear: experience now, write later.

Because of technological limitations, many writers have done the same. Jack Kerouac, after living the events of his novel On the Road, sat down and composed the entire book on one continuous role of paper. It just goes to show you that sometimes the story of how something was written can become just as famous as the writing itself.

With all the technology available to us today, recording something as it's happening has become easier than ever. That's really what Twitter and smartphones are all about. And we all know that "realtime" is probably the most popular term used in the tech community today. Certainly being a realtime poet while traveling has its advantages, but Wordsworth wouldn't have approved of that initial observation becoming the final poem.

It seems to come down to a single question: is your poetry an observation or a recollection? The answer is in how you write. In our realtime world, there's certainly nothing wrong with a quick spurt of emotion, but there's also something to be said for a more sluggish reflection. Which do you prefer?

Tweet Your Heart Out: Literary "Twestival" in Edinburgh

From the creators of the West Port Book Festival, which operates in and around Edinburgh, Scotland's vibrant West Port bookselling community, comes a great new experiment in combining the world of poetry with the world of technology. They're calling it the world's first "Literary Twestival". Basically, it'll be a reading of all manner of creative works posted to Twitter. The WPBF has issued a number of writing challenges that you yourself can tweet with the hashtag #LitTwest.

Many of you have heard about this already, but for those who haven't, the Twestival will be held in two days on Aug. 14th at 8 PM GMT at the Tea Tree Tea Cafe. Stop by if you live in Britain; it sounds like it'll be worth the trip! If you don't live close enough to participate in person, read through the challenges in order to participate from afar. You never know when someone will like your work and decide to read it aloud. They even allow live tweeting at the event, so you can keep on working up to the last possible minute. Good luck!

Castle in the Clouds: Read Write Poem Launches Social Network for Poets

Poets thrive in communities. Shakespeare had London's robust playwriting community; Fitzgerald had Hemingway and vice versa. Ginsberg had Kerouac and the other Beats. Even stodgy, gloomy Milton had Andrew Marvell. Though nothing can replace a close, personal friendship with someone who shares your craft, the internet provides us with many more opportunities to collaborate with fellow poets, and to create these kind of friendships.

Read Write Poem, a website that has been cultivating a community of poets for a quite a while, understands that interaction with other writers can be a poet's bread and butter. Since its inception, the site has been issuing weekly "challenges" that allow the community to work on similar projects at the same time. That alone made it a site worthy of recognition, but the Read Write Poem team wasn't content to stop there. This dedicated team, including Dana Guthrie Martin, Andre Tan, Dave Jarecki, Nathan Moore, and Deb Scott, has been working hard to turn Read Write Poem into a hotspot for poets on the web.

In a site redesign years in the making but just finalized two days ago, this relatively simple blog has become a full-fledged social network. With groups, forums, messages, and individual profile pages, Read Write Poem has overnight become a Facebook for poets, in the same way that the fairly popular Goodreads is a Facebook for readers. Already Read Write Poem is blossoming into a successful, active community. There are many available groups with discussions going on now. Since joining a couple days ago, I've found it to be a pretty welcoming atmosphere. If you're interesting in meeting and working with fellow poets, I highly recommend giving the site a try.

"But," you say, "I already have Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Goodreads! Do you really expect me to maintain another social network? All these other places have groups and resources for poetry lovers. Why do I need a specialized network?" Broad-based social networks are great for general discussions and finding people with shared interests. But a network with a specific focus can simply provide resources and in-depth conversation that a less-specialized community can't. Already the discussions on Read Write Poem delve deeper into poetics than any Facebook group I can think of.

Even if you feel overwhelmed by the social web, you'll find this site to be a good break from the madness, rather than an additional burden. Who knows, you may even find the Kerouac to your Ginsberg. And as poets, can we really afford to work alone?


[Also, feel free to seek me out on Read Write Poem here.]

The Art of Leisure: Why the Outside World Thinks This Blog Is Useless

Both poetry and technology are activities of leisure. You can't [directly] procure food, clothing, or shelter by penning a haiku or friending someone on Facebook.  These are specialized tasks designed to take up time after physical needs are already met.  After all, Plato initially expelled poets from his hypothetical Republic because he perceived they were ultimately useless to government and potentially undermined its efficiency. And the very label "nerd" seems to imply a kind of uselessness: it's not the same as calling someone smart or tech-savvy. We have a whole subculture built on the idea of spending "too much time" using technology, but there's not a hard and fast idea of spending too much time, say, jogging or biking. These are leisure activities too, after all, but because of their value to physical exercise they are distinct as useful. Apparently, exercising your mind doesn't count.

Society tends to scorn people, like poets and nerds, who they perceive as ignoring what's most important about life. In our culture, people who care about things like poetry, or new kinds of technology that's dubbed a "time-waster," are cast aside as somehow completely useless.  As someone who blogs about both, I obviously don't believe that's true, but I do think it's interesting that these very different areas of interest share this same scorned quality.

There is, of course, another side to the coin. Plato expels the poets early in the Republic, but later he admits them again. He realizes that poetry can further the cause of justice after all. [It is, of course, much more complicated than that, but we'll have to reserve an in-depth discussion for another day.] Poetry can shed light on important social issues that would otherwise go unnoticed. It's why so many of the most important poets have come out of subgroups that are oppressed in one way or another. Poetry can be a way for the voiceless to speak.

Technology, too, can have an unforeseen effect. Long before any inkling of a business model, Twitter made, and is still making, a real difference in Iran during the turmoil surrounding its contested election. What we can learn from this is that the things which the larger world brands as useless often play a bigger, more important role, than anyone could have imagined.

People should be encouraged to pursue lines of thinking that have no apparent, immediate use, because often the best uses are unforeseen. It's the same argument that is made to promote scientific research that has no obvious utility. Experimental science, computer technology, poetry, space travel: these are all things that have arisen out of apparent uselessness, that we have done after more immediate needs have been met. And it is what we do after procuring food, shelter, and clothing that really defines us as humans. Like it or not, it's so-called leisure activities that make us extraordinary. And it's because these endeavors are just that: extra-ordinary.

What do you think? Am I comparing apples to oranges with poetry and science? Are the types scorn each comes under fundamentally different? Are these not, ultimately, leisure activities after all? Sound off in the comments, or feel free to drop me a reply on Twitter.

Posted via email from Paradise Tossed Posterous

Feedly: A Useful Tool for Poetry and Everything Else

Sometimes the best sources for researching poetry are the sources that are good for researching anything else. For example, you can get a lot of poetry information just by doing a basic Google search for "poetry", "poems", or "poets". What I want to share with you today is just such a source: a tool that is great for getting information about anything, but can be put to great use for finding poems and poets.

One of the ways I get a lot of the information that I share on Twitter is through RSS [Really Simple Syndication] feeds. RSS is a format through which sites can be subscribed to, and new content can be aggregated and viewed at a central location, called an RSS reader. Google's online product for reading RSS feeds, called Google Reader, is almost unparalleled in its efficiency and ease of use. I've been using Google Reader for a long time to monitor my favorite news sites, blogs, and poetry sites. Recently I came across a great source that enhances the usefulness of my Google Reader feeds.

Feedly is a Firefox add-on [Thankfully, it works with Firefox 3.5!] that syncs with your current Google Reader account, but gives you a much richer, social reading experience. Above you can see my Feedly cover page from a couple days ago. It shows, in a magazine-like style, some of the most popular recent stories from the RSS feeds I am subscribed too. In the left column it shows which feeds have new stories, the middle two columns include some of my feed categories, and the far right column has my recent Twitter stream.

The key to Feedly is its Twitter, Friendfeed, and Digg integration. By glancing at an expanded story, you can see how many times its been liked on Friendfeed, how many diggs it has, and how many times its been shared on Google Reader. With a single click you can share the content on a plethora of social sites as well. This add-on has become my Firefox start page and has revolutionized the way I use and think of RSS feeds.

So what does all this have to do with poetry? Well as you can see, I have a poetry section for my feeds that allows me to monitor specific sites. But beyond that, Feedly offers a search feature that really kicks things into high gear. When you type a term into the page's search box, it gives you the option to "explore" or "search". Search just gives you results from your own feeds like Google Reader, but Exploring a term like "poetry" gives you a page like this:

You've got results from your own feeds, from a Google News search, from Twitter and Friendfeed, and video, pictures, and other content from the web at large. This feature allows you to track a particular interest like *cough cough* poetry across most of the web at a glance. I've taken to checking the explore page for poetry throughout the day as a way to see what's going on with poets all around the Internet. Overall, Feedly makes it easier for me to find out about the things I care about, and to share them with people I know everywhere.

Update [10-19-09]: Though still in early alpha testing, Feedly is currently porting its fantastic product to to both Chrome and Safari browsers as well as Firefox. Follow @feedly_chrome and @feedly_safari for more information.

Pushing Boundaries

After a longer-than-planned hiatus, I'm very excited to say that Paradise Tossed has returned. As you can see, the blog has a new home and a new look. Though the design will continue to change in the next few weeks as we adapt it to the content we want to provide, what hasn't changed is the ultimate point of the site: to showcase the myriad ways poetry and technology converge.

Over the next few posts, you'll be introduced to the site's new writers. It occurred to me that this project will really only thrive when different perspectives play a part. My new collaborators will bring insights and experiences that I can't, and we'll all benefit from our differences. Now on to today's post:

I'm sure by now anyone reading this has heard of the unrest in Iran. Our hearts go out to Iran's protesters and to the families of those who have given their lives for such a noble cause. Thanks to today's social media, particularly Twitter, the people of Iran have been able to reach out to the world and keep all of us informed of their struggle.

The internet has become a place where the eyes of the world have turned to Iran and its culture. With this in mind, I thought it would be nice to showcase some sources of poetry written in Persian. Poetry is one of the primary ways in which a culture as a whole reaches out and gives the world an impression of the things that it values. Thanks to the online translation tools available today, this poetry is available to us immediately, rather than after a particular poem has been selected for translation "by hand".

Persian culture is so rich, and their poetic tradition reaches back to the ancient world. I don't often recommend Wikipedia for poetry resources, but in this case their article on Persian literature gives a nice summary of the literary world of Iran for those first learning about Iran's poetic traditions. The article also includes a number of great links to sources of Persian poetry across the internet, in both English and Persian (Farsi). Don't be afraid to use Google Translate on the sites written in Persian to get a fair English translation of the poems there.

The website Iranian.com also has an excellent poetry section that showcases both authors and individual poems. And one of my favorite webpages for Persian poetry showcases Iranian women poets and samples poems from the book Modern Persian Poetry by Mahmud Kianush.

The important thing, beyond visiting these sites in particular, is to know that these kinds of resources exist and are readily available to people all over the world. One of the best ways to understand a different culture is to examine their poetry, and in this political climate the poetic voice of Iran has never been more important.

iPod vs. Moleskine: False Dilemma?

I have two Moleskine notebooks which I guard and love like children. One is the classic pocket-size that I use for everyday notes, passing thoughts, or writing ideas. The other is a larger, journal-size version in which I keep my more formal creative writing. I wouldn’t trade either of them for the world: they are perfect for my purposes and their simple, elegant design is completely inspiring.

I could say the same for my iPod Touch. In the short time I’ve had it, it’s become an indispensable little gadget. It functions as an mp3 player, game console, remote control, netbook, and much more. As the Moleskine notebook is to writing, so is the iPod Touch (or iPhone) to portable computing.

Up until now, incorporating the two into my already gadget-ridden life hasn’t been a problem. That is, until Touch Poet came along. This fantastic little iPhone app has thrown my conception of what each of my devices is for out the window. Until then, the iPod was the information aggregator: it answered e-mails, looked up words, updated Twitter, and checked my calendar events. The Moleskines were the creativity engines: they expressed my individuality, explored my own brand of poetry, and generally helped me take a break from the hustle and bustle. But Touch Poet made things altogether different. This app allowed me to create little mini poems from words that were brought in from all corners of the internet. Take a look:

Granted, the phrases I have up there don’t really constitute poetry, but you get the idea. Words are generated from various news sources, your own e-mail accounts, the works of Shakespeare, Poe, and Kipling, and social bookmarking site Digg. You take those words and arrange them in any way you like. It’s a simple concept, and a very nice looking app. It even lets you post your final poem to Twitter, which is the most thoughtful feature.

So why did this throw my creative life into (slightly exaggerated) disarray? Because beyond the initial fun of it, I actually found Touch Poet to be very useful to my creative process. I started to use the app to find useful phrases that then got incorporated into my larger work. I wound up with two competing devices, both serving my creativity, to and from which I spent a great deal of my time transcribing.

As you know, oftentimes writing is about rhythm, both structured and unstructured. At first I found that the cacophony of these devices working against one another was interrupting this rhythm, and I felt a strong urge to get rid of one or the other. With time, though, and even as I’m writing this post, a new rhythm is emerging. There’s a great partnership to be had between the high tech and the low tech, and slowly but surely I’m learning to balance my time. Until then, I’ll keep writing with my iPod in one hand and my Moleskine in the other. After all, the important thing is that we all keep writing.

The Wednesday Five

In case you haven’t seen it already, Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy has written a hilarious poem in rhyming couplets called “The ABCs of Skepticism”. Jonathan Swift, eat your heart out!

In this week’s Five, I wanted to focus on poetry tools instead of poetry databases. The sites I’ve listed are excellent resources for helping writers, readers, and teachers to deal with complex poetic issues.

1. Wikisaurus

A little known off-shoot of the vast Wikipedia project, Wikisaurus is one of the best online thesauri out there. I’ve got nothing against Roget’s, but the interactive nature of a wiki fits the idea of a thesaurus perfectly. It’s like asking thousands of your closest friends, “What another word for…?”

2. Wordle

Wordle is a great site for creating “word clouds” out of your own text. This can be great for spicing up an otherwise serious topic. A friend of mine used a cloud from Wordle as a title page for her project on literary freedom in Iran. Also I think that it’s important for poets to never forget that although we deal in words, much of our art is visual in some ways. Plus, this tool is just plain fun to use! Here’s a really great anonymous one about Spring:

3. Poetry Forge
Above is a picture of a a great flash poetry tool for metaphor, but Poetry Forge is chock full of a variety of resources for both students and teachers. Run by the University of Virginia, this site is well-maintained and straightforward: perfect for when you start to feel bogged down by poetic challenges.

4. readwritethink

Not to be confused with last week’s excellent readwritepoem, this site is a fantastic reading and writing guide from the International Reading Association. Geared specifically toward education and making poetry work for teachers and students in and out of the classroom, this site is recommended especially for those of you who instruct poetry in some way.

5. twiHaiku

Alright, so I’ll admit that this site doesn’t fit with today’s theme, but it fit with last Monday’s post, and I can’t go another week without mentioning it. This pretty amazing project is part of the makeliterature.com network, a social website that offers itself up as a self-publishing medium. With your own makeliterature account, you can submit haiku to the twiHaiku site by simply typing it into the right box, just like tweeting yourself. Your haiku is then displayed on the@twiHaiku Twitter account. What this creates is a network of dedicated haiku poets who collaborate to provide the Twitter community with a steady stream of original poetry. If you can’t already tell, I’m simply brimming with excitement about this project, and watching it grow has been great fun!

And that’s it for today. I’d like to finish by asking a question to all the poetry teachers out there: what are your favorite resources for getting your students excited about poetry?

Of Travel, Lapses, and General Merriment

To start off I’d like to apologize for having taken such a long unexpected hiatus from blogging. Last Wednesday I left for Minneapolis to attend the Sigma Tau Delta Convention. In case you’ve never heard of it, Sigma Tau Delta is an honors society for English majors across the globe, but is mostly made up of American undergraduates. Anyway, I thought I was going to have more consistent access to the internet while I was there, and this wasn’t the case. So thanks to all who stopped by looking for articles and didn’t find them; I’ll resume my regular schedule after this post!

I don’t think of this as a space to share my personal experiences with you, but when they pertain to poetry I can’t help but fold it in. This conference is a gathering of students from all across the country, and in addition to scholarly papers they are permitted to submit and present original works of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. I was accepted for an original fiction piece, and it was nice to be able to travel there and share some of my writing with the larger world.

Needless to say, I spent the better part of the week listening to a lot people read their work. I was instantly struck by how easily technology could have improved the experience. Sigma Tau Delta is generally a place for people on the brink, future literature scholars and creative writers who are just finishing their undergraduate degrees and represent the next wave of thinking and writing literature. The only whiff of technology I got the whole time was a rather unsuccessful proposal for a live-blogging program. There is no current evidence on the website that this blog even existed. If the literary world is to move into the 20th century, we must continue to embrace technology and the ways in which it can help us.

Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress are quick, easy ways to focus a large group of people on a single goal, but for some reason many at this particular conference seemed uneasy to try these approaches. I’m thinking mainly of the SXSW conference, where for the past three years Twitter has been responsible for main ebb and flow of events. Had they begun their blogging project sooner, we could have used the site as a way to familiarize ourselves with the pieces before the short readings. Questions to panelists could have been tweeted to a special account, making it possible to participate in several panels at once. And though I’m not a huge Facebook fan, a 2009 Conference group would have made it possible to meet people beforehand, and recognize them throughout the weekend. These are just a few of the ways that social networking can improve conference experiences. And in an area such as poetry, which thrives on collaboration, social experiences should be enhanced in any way possible.

Overall, the conference was wonderful. I discovered a beautiful new city, and I enjoyed the time spent with my fellow writers and thinkers, particularly the ones who I have gone to school with for years but never really gotten to know. I only think of all the other connections I could have made had more people there been willing to use the extraordinary tools that other groups of thinkers have already embraced.

A New Wednesday Tradition

There are so many places out there to read or post poetry. A broad spectrum of web tools has been employed to help disseminate all the poetry out there, putting it into manageable chunks for us to happily digest. As the beginning of what I hope will be a long-standing tradition, I’d like to use the Wednesday post here atParadise Tossed to list five poetry web sources that I think are worth checking out.

1. Poetry Wikia

This poetry wiki, which uses wikia.com as it’s particular base of operations, is the best poetry wiki that I’ve found. As a wiki should be, it’s very user-oriented and makes a concerted effort to foster a community. They’re doing well so far, with 228 poems to date, and a quick look around the site shows that the folks in charge know what they’re doing technologically speaking. Also, my favorite part is that some of the poems include links to specific quirky Wikipedia articles that define some of the poets’ words. It’s a very meta-wiki-experience.

2. Open Micro

Open Micro, a tumblelog for micropoetry, gets its submissions mostly from Twitter users, but the site itself is part of Tumblr. They’re really breaking into this whole idea of reading and discussing micropoetry outside of Twitter. It’s also nice to have a source that sifts through the wide array of micropoems that are out there.

3. World Class Poetry Blog

Not only does this blog have a completely understated and modest title, it’s also a nice comprehensive poetry source. There are plenty of poetry posts, but also lots of discussion about the internet and the direction in which poetry is moving. They just started accepting guest bloggers, so you may want to see if you’ve got two cents to put in!

4. The Library of Congress

Now, I’m sure that when most of you think of poetry, the federal government is not the first thing to come to mind. That’s why I’ve included the Library of Congress’s site on the list. This site offers information about the Poet Laureate, resources for teachers and students, information about archived poems, and a whole bunch of poetry news that’s hard to find anywhere else.

5. Poetry Notebook

I try to stay away from plugging more personal blogs, but Dirk Johnson’s site is exceptional. His poetry is both deep and accessible, his knowledge of poetic history is very informative, and he links to a bunch of other good sites. This site is a great starting point if you’re thinking about starting your own blog-as-personal-poetry-journal.

All of these sites, along with future recommendations, will be added to the “Sites You Should Visit” list for reference. Please comment with suggestions for sites you think deserve a shout-out.

I leave you today with yet another great poetry comic. I told you two posts ago that Randall Munroe constantly pushes the envelop, and he certainly didn’t disappoint in today’s comic:

Title-text: It's even harder if you're an asshole who pronounces brackets.

Introduction and Example

There’s a lot of poetry on the internet. So much, in fact, that people are finally beginning to sit up and take notice. But the truly interesting thing is beyond that a bit: poetry doesn’t sit idly by as a new medium comes into its own. Like a scrappy bacterium, poetry evolves, adapts, and takes on a new shape to fit its new environment. All over the internet, new forms of poetry are taking shape, and old ones are finding new homes.

Take one of the oldest forms of poetry as an example: the haiku. These beauties of brevity have been around for quite a while, and I’m sure many of you remember working out the 5-7-5 syllable structure in grammar school. But lately these tiny verses have found an internet niche. The popular social networking site Twitter, which has a 140-character limit for all posts, abounds with posts as haiku. If you search Twitter for “#haiku” you’ll be deluged with folks who find that this particularly poetic art-form has them all… well… atwitter. There are even Twitter accounts, like @haiQ, that only post in haiku form.

Twitter users took
A most ancient form of verse
And crafted it anew