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When we founded The Cortland Review last year, it was my intention to bring to the
Web a magazine of print quality that would fully utilize the advantages of the Internet.
With Issue Three, The Cortland Review publishes in both text and audio, bringing some of
the world's finest poets online. For some, it's their first time in this format!Douglas
Thornsjo, A.F. Moritz, and R.T. Smith make their Web debut in this issue. It also marks
the debut of a new talent, one that I was very pleased to have found: her name is Muffy
Bolding, and she is an exhilarating poet. She is authoritative and earthy; contemporary,
yet she doesn't ask that you have a Ph.D. to understand her. I am very much interested in
following her career as it develops.
Getting back to the original point, perhaps the most interesting aspect of Internet
poetry is the financial side. The cost of a hardcopy magazine like The Cortland Review
would be staggering. The Web allows us to push the marketplace economy to the side.
Editors do not need to worry about funding and such. Instead they can focus their
attention on the creative aspects of putting a literary magazine together.
In an interview with renowned poet John Kinsella, Jacket Editor John Tranter intimated
that the Web is perhaps the best forum for poetry. I agree. The Cortland Review's second
issue reached more people in more countries than most print litmags did with their most
recent issue. The Internet certainly proves it can be a powerful medium for poetry. |
