More Proof Poetry is Thriving Online?

“The British-based Poetry Archive has released statistics that visitors to its website are now viewing a total of more than one million pages a month. More than 125,000 individuals – or ‘unique visitors’ in web jargon – have visited the site, which hosts poems and audio readings by the poets themselves.”

via The Telegraph (UK)

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1. The Naropa University Archive Project is preserving and providing access to over 5000 hours of recordings made at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. The library was developed under the auspices of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics (the university's Department of Writing and Poetics) founded in 1974 by poets Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg. It contains readings, lectures, performances, seminars, panels and workshops conducted at Naropa by many of the leading figures of the U.S.literary avant-garde. via Internet Archive:  Naropa Poetics Audio Archive

2. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems.

   From a statement read at an event marking the release of Best American Poetry 2008, held last night at The New School, in New York City. David Lehman is the series editor of Best American Poetry, and Robert Polito is the director of the writing program at The New School. Chairman Lehman, Secretary Polito, distinguished poets and readers—I regret having to interrupt the celebrations tonight with an important announcement. As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry. Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets. Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance. Illiquid poetry assets are choking off the flow of imagination that is so vital to our literature. When the literary system works as it should, poetry and poetry assets flow to and from readers and writers to create a productive part of the cultural field. As toxic poetry assets block the system, the poisoning of literary markets has the potential to damage our cultural institutions irreparably. As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems. The risks poets have taken have been too great; the aesthetic negligence has been profound. The age of decadence must come to an end with the imposition of oversight and regulation on poetry composition and publishing practices. We are convinced that once we have removed these troubled and distressed poems from circulation, our cultural sector will stabilize and readers will regain confidence in American literature. We estimate that for the buyout to be successful, we will need to remove from circulation all poems written after 1904. This will be a fresh start, a new dawn of a new day. Without these illiquid poems threatening to overwhelm readers, we will be able to create a literary culture with a solid aesthetic foundation. I’m Charles Bernstein, and I approved this message. via Harper's Magazine
3. "Poetry is, I think, the highest medium that mankind has ever come up with," he asserted in a 1981 interview. "It's language itself, which is a miraculous medium which makes everything else that man has ever done possible." James Dickey | Poets.org
4. EDINBURGH, Scotland, Nov. 2 (UPI) -- The works of Robert Burns are being Twittered as part of the celebration of the Scottish poet's 250th birthday. Users can pick up short excerpts from Burns' works, along with factoids about the Ayrshire poet, The Scotsman reported. The National Trust for Scotland is behind the project. "We like to find new ways of spreading the works of our national icons," said the trust's chairwoman, Shonaig Macpherson. "Twitter is an inexpensive and fun way to do that." Burns was born on a farm in Alloway, outside Ayr, Jan. 25, 1759. The trust is also involved in a renovation of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Appropriately, one of Burns' most famous poems was "To A Mouse," an ode to a rodent disturbed by his plow that begins "Wee slickit cowerin' timorous beastie." via UPI
   
5. It’s a happy trend. Increasingly, we’re seeing museums launching dynamic online exhibitions to accompany their exhibitions on the ground. In the past, we highlighted the Tate Modern’s panoramic tour of Mark Rothko’s work. And now we point you to The Life and Work of William Butler Yeats, an online exhibition created by The National Library of Ireland. When you enter the tour, you can scan through 200 artifacts & manuscripts and “attend” three in-depth tutorials exploring the evolution of three major poems (‘Sailing to Byzantium’, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen’). You can also listen to Yeats, one of Ireland’s towering poets, reciting his famous poem ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’ To listen, click “Areas” on the bottom navigation, then click “Verse and Vision” on the center menu, and then the audio will begin to play. You can read the text of the poem here. Finally, you’ll find more Yeats poems in our Free Audio Book collection.
   1. ggratton says . . . | September 16, 2009 / 7:58 am:
      Thank you for highlighting the amazing Yeats site. I've been telling my colleagues that this site is the promise of the internet realized.
   Yeats painting by Barrie Maguire
   via openculture.com
   via @victorgodot
   Enter the tour here

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