On Online Poetry Sites

I have belonged to poets.com, bulldogpoetryworkshop.com, thepoetstree.com, and I currently belong to poetsinkwell.com and worldofpoets.com. Even with all this, I don't think I've really scratched the surface of the poetry sites available on the internet.

These sites allow you to post your work for others to read and review. In exchange, you are expected to read and review other people's works. It was an eye-opening process when I first started to do this, now it's mostly just amusing.

The first site I joined was poets.com. It is one of many sites owned by poetry.com which makes its money by publishing anthologies of contest winners (which is virtually everyone who submits) and selling them to the winners at $50 a pop. In other words, it's a vanity press with a twist.

Poets.com is a workshop of sorts where one pays a subscription fee to be a member. You can join for one month, three months or a year with the longer terms being gradually less expensive than the shorter when averaged per month. When I first joined poets.com, it was with the hopes of finding experienced, published poets who would be able to provide me feedback in this endeavor I had started. What a surprise when I went into the site as a paid member to see literally hundreds of Poet Laureates gracing the site.

In fact, I saw too many, which made me suspicious.

But I was willing to accept the possibility that a poetry site with as focused a name as poets.com might have a wealth of poetic knowledge and wisdom at its service, so I started looking at the works of the 'masters' there.

I read some work that I thought was mediocre and accepted the fact that not every piece written is a work of art. But as I plowed through the mediocrity and ran into absolutely hideous 'poetry', I began to realize that these erstwhile Laureates were not, in fact, Laureates at all. They were merely people who had been reviewed enough by others to receive the fairy tale title of Poet Laureate.

I learned the game quickly enough to become a Laureate myself, and a Judge Advocate as well (the reviewer's rank). It was just a matter of running the numbers. Just keep reviewing and getting reviewed and the ranks build up. This was not a game of substance, simply one of ego stroking.

You see, many of the folks that attained ranking on the site actually thought they were the equivalent of true Poet Laureates (not that all of them are that great). I read many a bio that sounded like Academy Award winners giving their acceptance speeches. It was always good for a chuckle.

Be warned, however, that a review leaning toward the negative could bring out the wrath of these people. "How dare you judge my work!", "You don't know anything about poetry!" and so on. That, too, was good for a chuckle as well.

The saving grace of this site was that I was able to find really good writers. They tended to be the quieter ones; there only for the writing and reading and reviewing. They didn't care for the titles or the silliness. I found excellent crafters of thought, metaphor, humor, in many styles, and I was always glad to call them friend. I still have the email addresses of some of them.

I am still involved with sites like this, though I left poets.com after their site redesign. Many from that site left as well, and I've run into them all across the spectrum. What I have concluded from my experiences is this...

1. These sites are really online communities, no more, no less. The flickr.com site is similar, only it deals with photographs instead of poems. Youtube is similar, but video-oriented. They are all communities with people meeting each other and interacting. The focus of the community is only a vehicle to draw like minded people together.

2. These sites are community-oriented, but they pander to ego as well, with the ability to build up points, tag favorites, award silly meaningless awards and such. There is a virtual plethora of people with no talent who consider themselves experts because enough people have stroked them for so long for whatever reason. The dynamics of it all are fascinating.

3. In every arena, you can find competence and true artistry. Sometimes it just takes some time and looking.

These sites can be enjoyable if one approaches them with the right attitude. In my opinion, the best way to do it is with a strong sense of humor and a willingness not to take any of it too seriously. Lord knows, too many get sucked into the fantasy of it all, and they feed off it. They should be pitied.