Treasures of the Internet: World Literature

Untitled 05 Dec 2008
Friday 08:08:14

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This section includes poetry written in English by North American poets (from Canada and the United States). Visit the English Poetry section for poetry written in or translated to English, as well as the Spanish and Latin-American Literature to have a glimpse of poetry and literature South of the US border, including the Caribbean. This page is a part of a much larger website: Treasures of the Internet. If this is your first visit, please read navigating this site.

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Untitled Reading poetry is an intimate communion, of specific thoughts and feelings, between the poet and the reader. This could develop even deeper upon further immersion into a poet's works, personal life and socio-cultural milieu.

The collective poetry of a country embodies a more personal distillation of human thoughts and dreams of a people. When read from a chronological and historical perspective, poetry provides a glimpse to the soul and aspirations of a nation and her people, at any given time. This insight that can be glimpsed from poetry complements those inferred by historians, about a nation and her people.

Subdivisions. A comprehensive archive of English poetry will be very bulky. Thus, this section is subdivided as follows:

Untitled English Poetry (Main page)
English poetry from its historical roots -- the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales) and Ireland. A separate page will be created in the future to present the works of contemporary poets from these countries.
Untitled American Verse
English poetry from Canada and the United States.
English Poetry (International)
[Currently under development.] This will include English poetry from Commonwealth countries (Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa, etc.), as well as poetry of well-known authors that were translated to English. Poetry from Latin America and Spain, including those translated to English, were integrated in the Untitled Latin American and Spanish Literature section.
Internet Literature
The internet has allowed a unique presentation of literature, especially poetry, that is not possible in the printed form. This "internet literature" integrates sounds and visuals with the presentation of words. Unlike cinema or installation arts however, the focus of "internet literature" is still the words and the presentation of words to convey thoughts and moods to the "reader".

Potential value of online resources. Personally, I do not think that the internet can ever replace the experience of reading (and turning the pages of) a book. However, how often were you in a situation when you yearn to reread a poem or want to ascertain a specific passage in a poem but could never find your copy of the book? Or, the poem itself is not contained in your own library of books? Even if you have the resources, it is impossible to have copies of all the works of literature -- even the best libraries are unable to achieve this.

Even if you have a book at hand, what is unsatisfactory about printed anthologies sometimes is that the content is very much dependent on the "mood of a period" or the preferences of the editor. Also, books of prose and poetry (especially those used in humanities classes in high school or college) focus too much on what is deemed as "good poetry". The need for comprehensivity and space limitations prevent a deeper exploration and appreciation of specific poets.

In contrast to the limitations of "printed literature", the internet can be very effective in organizing and presenting almost all information about a poet and his(her) poems -- a feat quite difficult to achieve by any "printed text form" without becoming very bulky. The "details" integrated from such internet compilations -- about the work and the context in which it was writtten as well as about the author him(her)self -- humanize a poem. In many instances, other poets and writers influenced the works of a poet. Thus, reading other contemporary writers or known figures of a period may provide further insights on a poet's writings.

All these can be done and presented more easily and effectively in well-organized internet literature archives. As important, the internet visitor can have complete control on the depth of his(her) exploration into these internet literature archives.

Immediate goals of this page. Many people, academic institutions and organizations are developing online sites that focus on specific poets and their works. Thus, one of the goals of this page would be to serve as a reliable archive of the more comprehensive compilations for individual poets. Preference will be accorded to archives that do not show advertisements.

In the future, this page will attempt to complement these encyclopeadic efforts of others by focusing on more comprehensive presentation of select poets and their poems -- including an understanding of the personal, socio-cultural and historical milieu that influenced the development of a poet and creation of a poem. Achieving the above objective will take time and involve more resources than we can muster at present. Thus, much like other online sites, this page will focus initially on a general presentation of representative poems of recognized (published) poets who wrote in or whose works have been translated to English.

Copyright. Because of copyright restrictions, most of the poems included were those published before the 1920's. [We are still developing policies on how to present (in depth) contemporary poems and poets without violating copyright laws.] For the moment, this site will link to internet resources with a selection of the poetry of some contemporary writers.

Navigating the site. Click on the icons (main headings, left navigation links and the A-Z navigation links above) as well as the superscript (underlined) symbols or numbers and letters, after a poet's name to visit online resources. Untitled

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First Written: 19990104 Latest Update: 20060328 Untitled

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