Electronic Poetry Center

Visiting the Electronic Poetry Center is a little like digging around for treasures in an attic--especially when the attic's owner happens to be an eclectic and Internet-savvy professor of poetry. The various nooks and crannies on this site are loaded with links to recordings of poetry and radio programs, an extensive list of journals, and even links to the best poetry blogs. The vast information is sorted and resorted into an endless variety of useful link-lists, which are frequently updated and well-adapted the electronic age.

Created and maintained by poet and educator Charles Bernstein and Loss Pequeno Glazier, a renowned expert in the field of digital poetry, the site is part of the poetics program at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The project's goal, as declared on the site, is "to make available a wide range of resources centered on digital and contemporary formally innovative poetries, new media writing, and literary programming."

The centerpieces of the Electronic Poetry Center are two extensive lists of author pages. The first is a list of contemporary poet pages that include photographs, biographies, and links to online works, interviews, essays, and critical information. However, it is the second major list that makes the Electronic Poetry Center truly unique: the E-Poetry section includes links to Internet-dependent works of poetry, including variously labeled hypertext, "webworks," animations, media performances, and other multimedia texts. There are also two essays in this section defining the medium of E-Poetry, as well as links to information sites and e-magazines.

The Electronic Poetry Center is web space used to its best advantage--the collection one finds here couldn’t exist in a physical building. With its diverse array of resources and a contemporary philosophy, it is a great starting point for those interested in the possibilites beyond the printed page.