A Welcome Word from Fledermaus.
Hello. This place is about poetry, poems, poetic works of different genres, eras, and time periods. It is a community for poets, lovers of poetry, those who appreciate art in all its forms. It’s also an online library. Poetry Monster is a monstrously diverse place for poetry.
This introductory message, like everything else in life, is of a temporary nature. I’ll soon move it to some other place on the site but now it stays here.
So, welcome to (the) Poetry Monster, a somewhat unusual poetry website, a nascent community and, I hope, a repository of outstanding poetry collections in several languages.
Here we can share our own words and thoughts as well as thoughts by others. Poetic or not. In English or in other languages.
With time, we’ll add a new section with parallel translations. But I can’t promise when that will exactly happen. Obviously, I’d appreciate any help with this endeavor.
For the time being the little Monster dwells in a short enfilade of caves. Its residence has an English, Russian, and a (largely machine-translated) Mandarin Chinese section, but I hope to add German and French “departments” to the labyrinth.
Now, this place looks quite empty, because I haven’t uploaded everything yet. More poetry is on its way. Subscribe to keep updated (the subscription form is at the bottom of this page) or better still join the community.
A Confession.
I must admit that I am a worthless manager and my prediction skills are equally catastrophically bad. Consequently, just putting this site together – and it’s far from being finished — took me far more time than I would have liked. In fact, organizing the most basic things consumed far more time than I had at my disposal. So, you want to become an administrator or have some ideas on how to better organize this site, then drop me a line.
That’s why I want this to become a communal effort or rather a collective endeavor. A place where people from different backgrounds and cultures can either mingle if they want to but also stay apart in their separate linguistic and cultural caves if they don’t.
Poetry Monster – as its name implies – and that’s also the website’s URL, is a place that has a light side to it. The cave is not dark and the monster is not scary (notwithstanding the improvised verse that follows this introduction below).
Your Fledermaus
And here is an improvised verse for the occasion:
1 This was improvised as a welcome message in verse for (the) Poetry Monster Please come in and help the poor poetic monster clean up organize his messy cave.
This Monster’s Cave looks like a mess
Though this is a disorder
Creative one I must profess
Or something on the border
Of madness, insolence, and vice
A building site to be precise
Disorder of the highest order
It’s not poetic paradise
Not even on the border
It is no plea, call of distress
But rather’s an invitation…
Come in, ignore the awful mess
And join the celebration
Of what may one day become
A monstrous undertaking
So step into the muses’ home
Stop shivering and shaking
In front of the ugly monster’s site
His sight is short
His thoughts not bright
His treasures ripe for taking
His breath’s heavy: noxious foam –
Pollution of the muses
But don’t be scared, step right in
And help ignite the fuses
Shake the poetic nitroglycerin
Let us commence abuses
Of verbs, and nouns, and other words
Regardless of their bruises
Let’s burn some stuff, so hop on board
Let’s vivisect the muses!
Let’s also write some brilliant verse
Let’s put it to good uses (It is impossible of course).
I know for better or for worse
It is impossible of course:
There is no use for verses
There is no use for muses
Though wait, and tell me what you hear?
I hear slurs and curses!
Ignore then, come, put down that phone
TikTok is not escaping!
Don’t run away but join what now looks
… like A Disaster in the Making
That’s it — post your own poem or you can post an ad for free (or even a poem though why would you do that there is a different matter altogether) at this virtual board.
- Rombout van Troyen, 1605-1655, – Interior of a Grotto, oil on copper[↩]