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This site is, by necessity, out-of-date.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 >

JUPITER 88

Jupiter. Also: Jupiter.

How To

I recently discovered the somewhat obvious fact that anyone can write a wikiHow article.

The most accomplished masterwork of instruction housed on their database that I've come across thus far is this elegant exploration of postmodern ennui:

How to Write Instructions*

This might be the new form of our generation. As much as I don't want to dig too deep into the pit of similarities shared by the wiki-entry and its precedent, the sonnet—I particularly enjoy wikiHow's 'Warning' section and how it functions as a sort of volta.

I wrote one called:

How to Start a Prominent New Business**

It begins:

1. Buy a lot of ties.

Consider this an invitation for poetry to explain the world to itself.*** Virgil was a guide. We are scientists.


*Based on work by Marilyn Haight, Lily A, Sondra C, BR, Dave Crosby, Manchurian President, Wingrider and Savannah, wikiHow user(s) Horses4Ever, Flickety, Paintsaint, Mypinkphone, Lillian May, Tikuko and BoldStepFixer and Anonymous.
**Flagged for deletion before I finished this post. Admittedly, this is not about starting a prominent new business.
***Which reminds me. Emily Pettit has a new book called How.