Children of a Sinister God, So Puff gets off, Her�esy release a duff first single which goes straight to Number One, and the financial markets pour their shares of woe down the drains. And the topic of chattering on the Sinister list is still whether people prefer girls with beards, or whatever. I saw The Story of Rachel played forth before me: �nick horn of africa wrote:�I always think electronic communication too fleeting, too brash, for poetry.� �Ah, but that's what they said about print when its nasty black uniformity took over from those pretty illustrated manuscripts. it wasn't true then either. one click is just a choice we make, like the choice to turn the page. the poetry's still there for the taking. at, for example, www.buzzwords.org.uk (ahem.)� Which is a fair point, and should I ever appear guilty of Luddism, I expect to be called to account. However, the comparison doesn�t convince me. We make a choice to turn the page. And, having done so, the page remains in existence. The page remains to haunt us. And, eventually, we relent and turn back to it. Poetry by email? One click. No traces. A memory-free medium. Is a poetry-free medium. I lie in my bed, gazing over to my bookcase. Noticing suddenly the spine of a book; a book not read for years. Intruiged, I struggle to my feet and immerse myself in the words.. Cold words � black on white � which only now, for the first time, reach out to me from their paper prison. I am hooked, at last. We need TIME to be won over by words of poetry. The internet is a medium celebrated for overcoming Time and Distance. It is a medium of immediacy. The sheer volume of information means that one cannot be grabbed so, for one can barely tell, or understand, where one idea ends and the next begins. I find it hard to touch anything. I find it hard to care. And perhaps I am bemoaning another Guttenberg Bible, taking exception to the vulgarisation of a traditional form. For, when push comes to shove, am I not simply grumpy about getting headaches while staring too intently at computer screens? "Maybe you'd picked up a whisper that I could not Before our glass could stir, some still small voice: 'Fame will come. Fame especially for you. Fame cannot be avoided. And when it comes You will have paid for it with your happiness, Your husband and your life.'" Nicholas Passant x ===== ------------------------------------------ All words belong in the public domain. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+