Welcome

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Welcome Dear Members,

Thank you for being a part of Yahoo! CyberPoet’s Niche Chat Club. Our club is a gathering place of poets from around the globe. It is a place to meet, to discuss and share the work of favorite and familiar established poets, and our own original work. I and my co-founder, AngelPie_Mouse mean this place to have a cozy atmosphere where you can feel comfortable exploring and sharing your poetic style and exchanging ideas with other poets. We wish to make this your club.

The Cyber Poet's Niche celebrates its first anniversary this Friday, August 20th, 1999. I began this Club as a special place where poets from all over the world could gather and discuss their latest work, talk, and get to know one another. With the members' participation we have made the group flourish.

Thanks to all of you fine poets the CyberPoet's Niche will continue to unite fellow poets from around the globe.

Mary Gonzalez (Founder of the CyberPoet’s Niche)

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For several months now, Cyber Poet's Niche has had its own webpage.   It is where we showcase the work of many of our members, list URLs to pages which focus on hundreds of favorite and familiar poets as well as websites that provide tools to help us write better, and post information and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs).   In the past couple of months, we have explored copyrighting and publishing--important issues to our members.

The website is authored and maintained by AngelPie_Mouse and is located at the following address: http://www.geocities.com/cyberpoetsniche.

Addendum from the Webmaster:

Of the thirty-nine members of CPN, fifteen are members with showcase pages on the club website. In alphabetic order, showcase members are: AngelPie_Mouse, ArrylT, Crowstouch, Elfenone, Faerimuse, IdentityMatrix, Isitis, Lane_Ware, Mgonzalez07, NALewis, Oldcusser, Poetry_Gal, Romusthepoet, Telescope07, TheCyberwitch. While we cannot expect 100% participation, we would be pleased if a few more members stepped forward and filled out the request form to showcase to be found on website.

This month (between July 21 and August 20) contributions were added to the showcase pages for the following members: AngelPie_Mouse, Crowstouch (new nickname), MGonzalez01, NALewis (new page), OldCusser, Poetry_Gal (new member), RomusthePoet, Telescope07 and TheCyberWitch (new page) (or for eight of our fifteen showcase members).   You may view these additions by clicking the name (on the website repost of this newsletter only).

We also added to our Interactive Poem and our listing of URLs for poetry sites and sites on writing aids.

Request from the Webmaster:

During the past few weeks, Yahoo-Geocities has been quietly changing things around--a new editor, new ways of accessing editors, swaps of servers to consolidate service. Occassionally, this means data loss and backup to displays that were saved prior to such losses. This may mean that page errors occur, poems dropped, or links becoming suddenly non-functional. It is impossible for me to catch all such errors given the size of our website. If you find such an error, please report it as soon as possible to [email protected].

Does anyone actually see our website?

Accounting: Among the things that Yahoo-Geocities changed this month was the policy of reporting the hits to our website (they no longer do this). Thus, we will have to begin our own accounting procedure until something new comes along. As of this moment, our main counter shows that we have had a total of 1,838 hits per all pages (or an average of 55 hits per page). Our index shows 485 visitors.

What do these numbers mean? The main counter indicates that people coming to our website do not come to read a single poet or to use a specific feature, but stay to sample several pages. While I cannot now report whether the total on Index represents any significant change in the number of visitors per day, I suspect that it does.

How do we advertise? Presently, we have have banner links on all pages in the website. This serves two functions. Primarily, it means we don't have those annoying pop-ups on our pages. However, a secondary purpose is that it increases our status in the banner rotation program which we joined at the time the page was created. (BTW, if you see our banner while visiting any Yahoo-Geocities website, please let me know -- it will never appear on our own website.) We also belong to two webrings: The Yahoo-Geocities Webring and the Club Founders' Club Webring. To this, I will be adding registration with the main search engines this month (we were awaiting a significant volume of material). But the main source of advertising is your "word of mouth." Every time you tell a friend that you have a poem posted to our website and give the address, you potentially increase the traffic (and possibly the membership in our club). Keep it up!

Resources: Yahoo-Geocities allows us 11 meg of space on website. Of that space, we are presently just under 5 meg used.

Question from the Webmaster To The FIFTEEN SHOWCASE MEMBERS: At present, the display of names in showcase are arranged in order of joining the showcase. When there were only a handful of members, this did not present a significant difficulty to locate links to individual pages. However, as our membership increases, it may be more prudent to arrange page links alphabetically. Since you are first in, however, I offer this decision to you. Should we maintain status quo, or should we alphabetize the list of showcases?

Would you like your work showcased? You may obtain a copy of the permission form (that is the form giving us permission to reprint your work from the message board) on this website by clicking here, or see the page Showcase Questionnaire from the Main Index page of this website.

We also welcome your articles and notes and information on websites you think would be of interest to your fellow poets and poetry lovers. And please, tell your friends where we are.

--AngelPie_Mouse, Webmaster

Every month there is a new Group Poem at the CyberPoet’s Niche Club.   It begins on the 20th of the previous month, with this newsletter, and concludes a few days before (so we can go to press with it).   This work is a special poem woven by each of the members of the CyberPoet’s Niche (that is: all members are welcome to contribute in open forum).   This month, for the month of August, the topic was "Summer in the City" and the Club composed this poem:

Summer in the City

August morning, 7 a.m. in the city... Odors of hot tar and asphalt mingle with car exhaust, steamy coffee smells from nearby cafes, and greasy donuts from carts on the avenue. Horse patrols ride by the intersection. The cobbled alleys give up the stench of winos cleared out before dawn. Glass and steel glistening, too hot to sweat. Phones ring unanswered in offices not yet open and the passage of pedestrians leaves footprints in the street.      (AngelPie_Mouse)

The heart of a city never dies, for it lives even as we sleep. Never stopping time for one person and forever swallowing another into its night. This is the tragedy before the rushing, crushing, and pushing of cattle when the bell rings. Is this all we have to offer?      (Isitis)

Is it the city which has life indeed, or is it the cumulative personality of men and women and machines blending into a single personae sightless, mindless. A Greek chorus of faces and voices watching the blinding of Oedipus unfold, nodding. There is nothing so pleasant as the fall of kings to assure us of our superiority.      (AngelPie_Mouse)

The city never sleeps, indeed! But men and women ponder In their aching need To slow down the pace of urban living, they often wonder... How our ancestors managed under the hot August skies... Sitting on their porches, rocking slowly Whilst inhaling the sweet smell of apple pies Cooling in the breeze. Sipping lemonade As grandmother knitted in perfect ease... Did they suffer from stress As we city people do? Did they suffer high blood pressure, I must try to guess; How did they ever handle the heat and humidity that dried the summer morning's dew...      (mgonzalez01)

The heat... How do we fight something that is so out of our control? Something we craved, something we need, And yet something so amazing that it can give life and take it away. How can we acquire the wisdom that slip so easily from our hands that our ancestors hold so dear? We are only human as a lily is only a plant. We can only do what our minds restrict us to. So let go of the rush, the pain, and the worry. See the sky, the clouds, and the flowers. Drink the sun-kissed golden medicine down to the tunnel of your soul. Let the wind tickle your ears and the birds sing you a lullaby. Let nature to you its story. Let the magic of the season ignite all your senses. Don't let the spirit of August fade away.      (Isitis)

[End]

Previous month's Group (or Interactive) Poems are published on the homepage in the section Our Writings as Interactive Poetry.

We presently have 39 members at the CyberPoet’s Niche.   We have Chat Night every Wednesday at 9PM Eastern.   We are number 16th place (and climbing; we were 18th last month and 20th the month before that) on the Poetry Clubs at Yahoo.   We are striving to be number 1!   If you have a friend you would like to invite, please do so.

• Baby Robyn, daughter of Lane_Ware celebrates her sixth week of life on the planet. Maybe we shouldn't make the comparison but, in some ways, our poetry are our children. So shouldn't the converse be true also? ...that our children are poems we give to the world? If that's the case, we can hope Baby Robyn is an epic.
• A special congratulations to member Nate Lewis who will be happily wed this weekend.
• The founders will also like to extend a warm welcome to the following new members: Poetry_Gal, Ralphie_Girl, Mythical_Rhyme, ArrylT, eddie85, jedi leia 17, mooselodge rick, pookiechick1, sweet sarah 12, and a warm welcome to Hunters' Child who returned to CPN!

Poet of the Month: Presented this month by AngelPie_Mouse, the current poet of the month is Maya Angelou (click to see). The work of this celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning poet will continue to be examined throughout the month of August.

Founder Sought: We are currently contemplating expanding our founder list to accomplish a ratio of one (1) founder for every ten (10) members although we may later expand this number. The idea is to get more people actively involved with the adminstration and business of the club--perhaps, find someone to moderate chat sessions, help with expanding our membership, help searching out URLs. If you think you are ready for this responsibility, please contact Mgonzalez01 or AngelPie_Mouse.

The following came out of on-line chat discussion this past Wednesday night (see, we do talk about serious subjects besides romance and software). We decided to pose it to you as a sort of question of the month.

Concept: The perception of the poet by others is often of "some depressed, morose individual who is not quite all there and who is frequently on the verge of suicide." Alternately, the poet is stereotyped as "some nature child who is perpetually smiling, whilst skipping through the woods strewing flowers in a completely senseless euphoria." (Being both, of course, is a psychological condition known as "bi-polar disorder.") A third view is that the poet, in his creative mode, stands apart from either depression or euphoria, examining the sensations of both (there’s probably a name for that psychological condition also).

Question: How would you define poet and what do you feel is the prevailing psychological state? (Please post your answers to the club message board or bring them with you to our regular Wednesday night chat session.)

Do you have a question you would like to pose to the membership? Bring it with you to our regular Wednesday night chat or write: [email protected].

Every month, we go out there and scour the net looking for sites on poetry which may be of interest as writing resources or merely for the enjoyment of poetry. Here are some good poetry sites we found this month.

A Rhyming Dictionary for Poetry and Songwriting Stuck for a rhyme? Input a word and get a list of synonyms one of which might just fit the bill. (Word: Bill; Suggested Rhymes: ..., bluegill, brazil, ..., chill, ..., distill, doorsill, downhill, drill, duckbill, dunghill, fill, foothill, freewill, frill, fulfil... you get the idea.) [http://www.WriteExpress.com/online.html]

The Kenyon Review Literary Journal. KR has been around since 1939, shaping literature and criticism across the world, and publishing the great authors of each generation, from Robert Lowell and Flannery O'Connor, to E.L. Doctorow, Joyce Carol Oates, and Amitav Ghosh. [http://www.kenyonreview.org/mainpage.htm]

Poets & Writers Online Homepage On-line version of the newstand magazine. Presents classifies, contests, articles, notice of events, and much more. [http://www.pw.org]

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