Web-Palaces

Has it been long enough to claim antiquity from the nineties? Of course. It's been long enough to claim that from yesterday's status updates--context often evaporates faster than you can respond. But here I want to look into one specific relic, namely:

The above image is the logo for "Erin Marie's Poetry Palace!": http://www.cswnet.com/~erin/, a website dedicated to housing a collection of poems, jokes, and Fun Javascripts, like this Tic Tac Toe "app":I played it on 'Hard,' despite the warning. And, predictably, there was no winner.

One page collects a selection of "Young American Poets and Their Poetry," including Gerald Costanzo, Gibbons Ruark, and W. S. Di Piero. A young Daniel Mark Epstein begins one of the poems presented there, "At the Millinery Shop":

She wants what no clerk in the city can bring her,
a hat that will make up her mind.

I wish I had one of those. Because then I might be able to decide whether I should try to describe the uncanny nature of the text-box on Erin's home page that fills as you scroll over a new link. After the field is populated, you can use your cursor to adjust the text. But it changes as soon as the mouse moves to something else. The interaction is more ephemeral than a google search, and yet it is still an interaction--with Erin.



This has, perhaps, a purer beauty. While the poet fades, his or her work scatters, multiplies, lives on, emits nothing, prophesies.

This site is, by necessity, out-of-date. And that is where its blessedness roots--in this little palace, where time shifts visibly. Ye Olde Poesie is often blessed in the same way. Look at it >