Diverging Digital Roads: Poetry and E-books

PW: "While digitizing poetry collections wasn't anyone's first priority, the time has come, and, in one way or another, most of the important poetry presses—Graywolf, Copper Canyon, BOA, Coffee House, Wesleyan—will make at least some of their books available as e-books by the fall."

Google Translate Takes On Poetry

WSJ: "Translating poetry is a fraught endeavor. Some would say it’s impossible for even the most creative, sensitive and literate translator to transpose the interplay of rhyme, meter, sound and meaning from one language to another without losing something crucial along the way. How much more impossible, one would think, for a soulless computer. But recently three engineers who work on Google Translate have been experimenting with just that: computer translated poetry...."

Haiku on Your iPhone

App Smart- NYTimes.com: "There are probably people who have read 'War and Peace' on their smartphones, but just the thought of spending that much time squinting at a little screen makes my eyes hurt. A little haiku, on the other hand? A snippet of e.e. cummings? ... Smartphones are arguably the best thing to hit poetry since the printing press, as even the most casual lovers of verse can read a poem whenever the spirit moves them, not just when they are in the vicinity of a book or computer. ..." Read on for a list of recommended apps.

Poetry And eBooks: Will Poems Ever Work In eBook Formatting?

Hillel Italie addresses the question:

NEW YORK — Billy Collins, one of the country's most popular poets, had never seen his work in e-book form until he recently downloaded his latest collection on his Kindle.

He was unpleasantly surprised.

"I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza. And that screws everything up," says Collins, a former U.S. poet laureate whose Ballistics came out in February. ...

Also check Travis Nichols on the topic of The eBook Ugly Stick.