Carl's Tiny Brain

As one of the few active poetry enthusiasts who did not major in the liberal arts, I’m often consulted for technical advice on website coding – particularly with respect to e-zine publishing. One thing that strikes me odd: Why must our e-zines be so stale and lifeless? Why are my e-zines stale and lifeless?

Am I trying to emulate the classy feel of a print magazine?

One of these days, we’re going to realize that we’re in a different ballgame here, and the internet poetry scene will quit trying to publish print periodicals online. The internet is now – real time, in motion - and growing rapidly. Imagine what we could accomplish if we allowed our craft to expand in ways that could never be expressed on paper.

Imagine a page poem presented as a sound file, with two alternating voices in different rhythms. Imagine one voice replacing the line breaks. Imagine poetic “bridges” where the spoken rhythm varies from the established pattern. Imagine words as a stream of video – paced exactly as the poet intended. Imagine faded visual refrains dispaying related metaphors in the background of a central image.

Be sure to check out beau blue's cafe at http://members.cruzio.com/~cafe to see what he's doing with multimedia poetry.

Imagine saying something in a completely new way.

That’s what poets do.