Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A web side review

The Poets' Corner is one of the largest and oldest text resources on the web. The goal of this ongoing project is to develop a user-friendly library that is both a useful reference and an appealing place to browse and explore - and there is plenty of material here to explore. The collection covers roughly 7,000 works by about 800 poets - including some of the best known works in the English language - and many obscure and forgotten works that are well worth reading.
This site has been recognized by numerous search engines (Britannica, Magellan, WebCrawler, Point, etc.), Publications (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Yahoo Internet Life), Broadcasters (the BBC, Oxygen), numerous university programs, and many, many of its users around the world.
This web site is unique because it not only has poetry but also pictures of the poets, for example, every picture I have ever seen of Poe appears a little bit skewed in an appropriately unsettling way. One painting of Jonson looks as if all it would take is another beer to get him to pen another song. Pound's stare seems almost as pointed as his satire, though not as pointed as Dame Edith's facial features. Also we can find in the Poets’ Corner a face book fan page, blog, short biographical summaries, title indexes and condensed author indexes. That makes this web side very original and easy to find whatever you look for.
They advertise themselves in this way; it’s our business to help you. We can’t relieve you of the burden of doing your own share of the work, but we can make the whole process less onerous, less agonizing – and possibly even enjoyable. No single Web site (or book or even library, for that matter) can encompass the entire world of poetry. But we can provide you with the tools to find what you need in the shortest amount of time so that you can get back to what you really want to be doing – namely, writing poetry.

2 comments:

  1. Very nice touch at the end, Adam.

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  2. I really like you comparison of the poets pictures to their work, it's a great way to write the review. The concluding ideas are really good too, but I think they could use some re-wording.

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