If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I lost the original post I wrote for today. I don't have time to redo the whole thing, so instead I have a peace offering. Check out this great 'Genre Fiction Generator' from the webcomic Wondermark, after the jump:

If you're not already a reader of this long-running webcomic [or 'illustrated jocularity'] from David Malki, perhaps you should be.

Many thanks to the incomparable Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing for bringing this to my attention.

There are so many places out there to read or post poetry. A broad spectrum of web tools has been employed to help disseminate all the poetry out there, putting it into manageable chunks for us to happily digest. As the beginning of what I hope will be a long-standing tradition, I’d like to use the Wednesday post here atParadise Tossed to list five poetry web sources that I think are worth checking out.

1. Poetry Wikia

This poetry wiki, which uses wikia.com as it’s particular base of operations, is the best poetry wiki that I’ve found. As a wiki should be, it’s very user-oriented and makes a concerted effort to foster a community. They’re doing well so far, with 228 poems to date, and a quick look around the site shows that the folks in charge know what they’re doing technologically speaking. Also, my favorite part is that some of the poems include links to specific quirky Wikipedia articles that define some of the poets’ words. It’s a very meta-wiki-experience.

2. Open Micro

Open Micro, a tumblelog for micropoetry, gets its submissions mostly from Twitter users, but the site itself is part of Tumblr. They’re really breaking into this whole idea of reading and discussing micropoetry outside of Twitter. It’s also nice to have a source that sifts through the wide array of micropoems that are out there.

3. World Class Poetry Blog

Not only does this blog have a completely understated and modest title, it’s also a nice comprehensive poetry source. There are plenty of poetry posts, but also lots of discussion about the internet and the direction in which poetry is moving. They just started accepting guest bloggers, so you may want to see if you’ve got two cents to put in!

4. The Library of Congress

Now, I’m sure that when most of you think of poetry, the federal government is not the first thing to come to mind. That’s why I’ve included the Library of Congress’s site on the list. This site offers information about the Poet Laureate, resources for teachers and students, information about archived poems, and a whole bunch of poetry news that’s hard to find anywhere else.

5. Poetry Notebook

I try to stay away from plugging more personal blogs, but Dirk Johnson’s site is exceptional. His poetry is both deep and accessible, his knowledge of poetic history is very informative, and he links to a bunch of other good sites. This site is a great starting point if you’re thinking about starting your own blog-as-personal-poetry-journal.

All of these sites, along with future recommendations, will be added to the “Sites You Should Visit” list for reference. Please comment with suggestions for sites you think deserve a shout-out.

I leave you today with yet another great poetry comic. I told you two posts ago that Randall Munroe constantly pushes the envelop, and he certainly didn’t disappoint in today’s comic:

Title-text: It's even harder if you're an asshole who pronounces brackets.

Poets are often stereotyped as taking themselves far too seriously; internet folk are often stereotyped as completely incapable of seriousness. Let’s put this to rest: neither of these statements is true. Poets know how to laugh at themselves, and the internet has plenty of gravitas. Not only that, but they manage to meet in the middle in today’s topic: webcomics.

There are plenty of webcomics that take up poetry as a theme. One of my favorites was a comic called “Poetry Artist” that has fallen by the wayside in recent years. Its archives are still well worth pursuing, though, and here’s a classic example:

Anders Ekman and David Noonan had a really great sense of how to poke fun at poets while still hinting that they secretly love words as much as their title character does.

A fascinating combination of comics and poetry was compiled by the good folks at the Poetry Foundation, who did a series of comic artists’ renderings of new and old poems. The artists really took some time to think closely about how the words could be transferred to images in a compelling way.

Lastly, one of the most popular webcomics of the moment is the oft-referenced xkcd. Its creator, Randall Munroe, is a huge fan of wordplay, and this comic really highlights that love:

But Randall never just does things halfway. Not long after this comic was posted, he created the fantastic LimerickDB.com, which uses the database format of sites like bash.org to allow users to post and rank their own limericks. It’s simply fantastic!

There was an intriguing webcomic
Whose purpose was quite telephonic
It’s encouraged new poems
As the wide web it roams
While enjoying a nice gin and tonic

Coming next week on Paradise Tossed:
– A blast from the past: What happened to hypertext poems?
– The top five poetry blogs and why you should read them
– Innovative resources for writing formal poetry