(Sorry about the wonky formatting last week! I have absolutely no idea why that happened.)
Source 1: Poets.org
Wow, what a wonderfully designed site. I love the simplicity and class of the layout, and I LOVE that it's easy to navigate. I hate coming across a site that might be beautiful and creatively designed, but the navigation system is obscure and confusing. This site is very user-friendly.
The section of essays on poetry contains some really fascinating stuff. I spent ages poking around in the section on poetry and film. I'm a movie buff, but there are a lot of films in that section that I haven't heard of, much less seen. There are also essays on poetry and art, poetry and music, different schools and movements of poetry... so many resources! I also like that there is a section for people just starting out reading and writing poetry.
The ability to search for poets and poems is very helpful. I've read poetry for various classes, but I have to admit that I'm not that familiar with too many poets. I like that I can browse around this site and familiarize myself with poets I might not have found otherwise.
One thing I'm amazed by is the mobile capability of the site. So many people are using the web from their mobile phones these days, and it's so cool to be able to search for poetry on the go. Unfortunately it looks like the mobile site is optimized for iPhones; I haven't tested it out on my crappy old Samsung yet, but I assume it'll work just fine. Now I can do more than check my email and Twitter and look up movie times!
The links section (online poetry resources) is exhaustive and incredibly helpful. Poets.org has plenty of resources itself, but to add links to all of this? Wow.
Source 2: Interview with Louise Erdrich
One thing that stuck out at me is Erdrich's observation that English is very gender-based. It's interesting, because I never really thought of English that way. When attempting to learn French, I was constantly frustrated by the need to remember the gender of nouns; the book is masculine while the poem is feminine. Gendered nouns are counterintuitive to me because we do not do that in English. It's fascinating to think, though, that English does rely on the gender of the speaker and of the object of speech. Ojibwemowin does not use gender in speech, but in English, we will always say, "I told her about the book."
I'm having trouble figuring out Erdrich's position on writing about characters that are not of the writer's ethnicity. On one hand, as she says, if we didn't write about people who are very different from us, we'd probably have to stop writing entirely. I'd get incredibly bored writing stories about white, female, twenty-something grad students, heh. But on the other hand, I can see how it would be very difficult for someone to write a believable, in-depth story about someone with a very different lifestyle or ethnicity. I guess that's why I believe in research. I think people should write whatever they're called to write, but that they if they choose to write about a character of different ethnicity, they should attempt to do so with as much sensitivity and thoroughness of research as possible.
Source 3: Electronic Poetry Center
I think this might be the best resource for e-poetry that I've looked at so far. I like the simple layout of the e-poetry section, an a to z listing of poets who have published their work online along with various sites dealing with e-poetry.
I've noticed a trend in that many of the webzines devoted to publishing e-poetry haven't updated in a few years. I wonder if this is just because many of the sites we're looking at share the same link pool, or if there's actually been a cooling off in publishing e-poems.
I love the list of blogs that deal with e-poetry. I enjoy bouncing around the web, reading blogs that catch my eye, and EPC has a big list of blogs to check out. The site also contains a large list of authors, linking to biographies on EPC's site. The authors also have linked CVs as well as links to examples of their work.
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- TDF Pamela
- I'm currently wandering through life, looking for the best path. I love reading, writing, pop culture, SF/fantasy, playing the Sims 2, and daydreaming. I blog here: http://www.thediscriminatingfangirl.com
7 comments:
The two websites you speak about will be very helpful to people hwo are interested in writing and may be don't know where to go to find information or just a little shy about writing. I like that you brought out people should reaserach before they write about something they know nothing about. The lack of knowledge about certain subjects could limit the number os awesome poems yet to be written. People just need to find their voice, research and write.
(Sorry about the number of misspelled words in the response. I will watch from now.
Responses to http://briarwylde.blogspot.com
Your blog leads me to my next website with poets.org because I enjoy a resource that is easy to navigate and well designed. With essays on poetry and film, students and teachers will be interested to begin their research here, especially since there is a section for beginners (poets, researchers, etc.). Numerous links that are helpful are beneficial to students and teachers, and being able to learn more about poets and read their works cultivates a classroom that is conducive for learning.
The Interview with Louise Erdrich is interesting; I would like to read and learn more about Erdrich’s thoughts on English as a gender-based language and the challenge for writers to write about different people. (I concur that research is most important, especially when writing a long piece or prose piece.) But, the Electronic Poetry Center is most helpful to me since I am intrigued with e-poetry and its development. The lists of poets who have published online and their biographies aid teachers and students when researching and understanding common motifs, or other aspects of authors’ works and lives. Of course, the blogs are appealing to students and are great as a teaching tool.
I hadn't noticed that the webzines hadn't been updated in the last several years. Intrigued, I checked it out and your are right. Many of them have stopped updating. Is this connected to the collapse of the tech industry a few years ago? Or just one of those things that ebb and flow naturally? It was an interesting thing to note though.
You and I had very similar responses to the Erdich interview.
I had not noticed the aspect of the interview where the ability to be genuine and true when writing about people and experiences outside of one's own experience is questioned. I think writers, like actors and actresses, must rely on their imaginations to create something new.
I think that we reviewed the same sites this week. I also think that we pretty much had the same thing to say.
We both picked up on the mobile capabilities of poets.org and that epc has not been updated lately. Crazy.
I too like to discover sites that are easy to navigate in; the continually re-setting of links and re-designing of their site is how they catch more viewers. The ease and amount of information offered are still a number one priority. It isn't really the site's appearance, also that may an initial beauty. The beginning poetry writer was the reason I checked out their resources. It does offer a vast amount of simple beginning writer techniques.
In response to poets.org, I saw a news story one time about a man who typed poetry on the street, creating poems for people on-the-go and they were good pieces too. I think allowing poetry to have such easy access will encourage it proliferation. It is difficult to find the time to pour over poetry for the average person, but looking up a poem on my cellphone. That's crazy; I have to try it!
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