|
There was a time that being a *Poet* meant knowing in-depth about the best use of words. Your tools were paper, typewriters, pencils, and pens. It meant knowledge of good "How-To-Market-Your-Writing" books and bookmarking the sections on "Poetry". It required buying postage stamps and an abundance of patience. It meant hoping. It meant wallpapering walls with rejections slips and more stamps. It meant time and perseverance. It meant that the odds of your work being presented to the world in mass numbers to strangers weren't in your favor. IF you did meet those odds, the last thing you had to worry about was artwork, presentation, and extensive marketing skills.
But, as good fortune would have it, the stunning combination of Poetry, Today, and Online has changed it considerably.
If you are to be a Poet, Today, and Online, it means you need to know more than words alone. It means that you will need to learn a an additional glossary of terms. For example, some of them are acronyms: *LOL*, *BTW*, *BRB*, and *LMA*... Well, we won't touch that one here. You will discover there is a difference between bytes, IPs, and HTML commands.
It means you will need to learn the dynamics of domain registration and web hosting. When you use E-Mail, your rejection slips come back as soon as you send out your poetry, and the only way to wallpaper a wall with those rejection slips is to print them. Poets today will learn artwork and presentation.
There are times I have spent more time designing a webpage than I have writing ten poems and moments where I have spent more time deciding what color background to use than what word to use. I can get by with a misused word, even a misspelled one, but I can't slip with the incorrect HTML code. My Web Browser won't let me. It doesn't seem to understand what I meant to do! But people can always determine what I meant to say. This will happen to any poet online today because Cyberspace is generic - yet customized of its own accord. Here, we are bound by a strong percentage of rigid rules.
Websites put the Poet in a very executive position regarding their own presentation of their work. It makes them responsible for how they appear to the public and the kind of impression they create.
Here is a sample of WebSite help that is available to start the design of your own Poetry Website -
Authoritive Guide to HTML
The Widow's Web Free Background Border Sets
HTML Refinements
Background Colors
Over the Rainbow (free clipart)
Angelfire - Free Website Space
Hotmail - Free Email Service
Domain Registration and Website Hosting Service.
© 1998 by Margaret Perkins
