December 19, 2003

Online Spaces for Poets

To the Editor:

A fascinating trend in contemporary poetry receives a useful survey by Lisa Russ Spaar in "Lines Online: Poetry Journals on the Web" (The Review, November 7). As coeditor of RIF/T, an early (1993-98) online writing space, I witnessed a minor paradigm shift in poetry publishing -- one that gradually gained the interest of many established print poets but that also formed new communities of emerging writers and shaped their practices.

Spaar's essay barely