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| Published in Beingzine, April, 1999 |
A Bookshelf Full of Wondrous Places and Fascinating People
My parents' bookcases were filled with enchantment. They took me to far away lands, distant times, and characters I could only meet on the pages of a book. This collection was long ago distributed among my brothers and sisters. My share sits with regal disdain among my paperbacks. I didn't mind until my grandson asked me to read to him. Still young enough to be tempted to color on century old tomes, I dared not let him alone with my prized memories. But what else could I offer? Newer versions were too expensive--until I found the Internet.
The Citadel at Sunrise
by Frank Frazetta
My adventure began at the Camelot Project featuring electronic versions of Arthurian legends; travel guides to Arthur's Britain; and a breathtaking collection of illustrations and paintings, including many taken from 19th and early 20th century books. My favorite characters' backgrounds and bibliographies, including Sir Gawain, Queen Guinevere, and the dashing Lancelot, were available via the site's search engine. Dan Beard's drawings for Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court led me to my next stop.
"Those who are born to be hanged needn't fear drowning," quipped Mark Twain's mother when asked if she feared her son's fascination with the Mississippi River. Fortunately, Twain inherited her wit. His ironic humor is featured at Ever The Twain Shall Meet. Titles like Huckleberry Finn and The Tragedy of Pudd'n'Head Wilson are listed in their entirety.
Project Gutenberg, is an ambitious attempt to place the world's classic literature online. I found an enormous set of complete books, by the world's finest writers, including Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Project Bartleby Archives also proves to be fascinating with the works of Chapman's Odyssey, Frost, Eliot, Housman, Keats, Dickinson, and Jewett.
The University of Maryland provides a generous mixture of genres in their women's studies reading room. Their writers, too numerous to list, include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edna St.Vincent Millay, Sara Teasdale, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Willa Cather, Agatha Christie, Anna Sewell and Virginia Woolf.
The Wiretap Online Library features a diverse collection. Classic literature, humor, music, religion, and zines are some of the choices. A quick sampling of the religious category found the complete Quran and Bible, plus writing from the world's great religions. Classics included A Child's Garden of Verses, a simple and priceless collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's poems.
Banned Booksfeatures such 'decadent' works as Joyce's Ulysses, Voltaire's Candide, the Quran, and the Bible (banned in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1956), which have all fallen victim to censorship. Banned by a military junta in Greece as recently as 1967, Aristophanes' ancient anti-war play Lysistrata is here. A list of "Most Frequently Challenged Books of the 1990s," includes Of Mice and Men, Huckleberry Finn, and Cujo.
The Atlantic Monthly features audio clips of poetry readings, reviews, and a selection of other genres. Post and Riposte is their discussion forum for all things literate.
The Poetry Society of America is the oldest poetry organization in the country. Founded in 1910, its members have included Robert Frost, Langston Hughes and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The PSA sponsors a national reading series, seminars by prominent poets, the American Poetry Festival and annual poetry competitions.
In 1998, Andrew Carroll of the American Poetry & Literacy (APL) Project spent National Poetry Month distributing 100,000 free books of poetry in public places. I retraced his steps at the Academy of American Poets. I also learned "How to Read a Poem," an instructive essay by Edward Hirsch, and watched a video of the White House Millennium Evening, hosted by President and Mrs. Clinton and featuring Poets Laureate Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass, and Rita Dove.
Light & Dust Poetsis the online home of North America's longest running visual poetry magazine. This site includes a number of complete books, many of them out of print. Some are published here for the first time.
This is only a small sampling of the rich variety available. Whenever I crave the luxury of great literature, I know I am bound to find more treasures on the Internet--and all for free. I no longer worry about reading to my grandson. I simply print a few pages, read them aloud and then let him color to his heart's content.
