dssg (08/11/82)
Well, at long last net.poems is here! Thanks for your support, all those who mailed me! To summarize, I received 12 positive and 1 negative responses. There were two additional suggestions, one about subgroups for discussion (both of new submissions and already published works), and one about a net.prose. I can see no reason against the former, but perhaps we should wait a while. As far as net.prose goes, I am not too sure; the negative response I received was mainly concerned over wasting resource with voluminous junk and while I can not see the submission quantity being that high it would probably not be too wise to encourage rambling. Besides I like poetry better, your're on your own for net.prose. In deference to the person who was against this newsgroup, I would also like to suggest that submissions be not too long; although I can't see anyone spending the time to type in a huge poem, it can't hurt to say it. My main reason for suggesting this newsgroup was for it to be entertaining, not for serious critical work. As a final personal note, I feel there is nothing that gives more beauty to a poem (or any literary endeavour, for that matter) than an overall structure. Perhaps it is my mathematical background, but seeing the elusive worms of English expression packed into an often rigorous rhyme/scan/alliteration(/...) scheme is what I think poetry is all about. The effort spent will never be wasted; at worst it is good exercise and at best it transforms the interesting to the sublime. Happy composing! Mark Ingram (CCNG Distributed Systems)