It is, broadly, an entryway to the unlimited domain of poetry, and a gate to fields of inquiry within the discipline of poetry. It is also a narrow colonnade, focusing on a small group of poets who are well-versed but underpublished.
It is a learning forum, parallel to the Stoa Poikile of Athens where Zeno authored the “porch philosophy” of the Stoics, a system of theories of knowledge, ontology, and ethics, etc. While this porch will not attempt to devise any such tightly organized systems of thought, it is hoped that it will take a hard look at the ideal as well as the concrete representations of the real world. A vantage point amidst the ever-transforming universe of knowledge, a meeting place, a classroom, a poetry reading, a place of conversation, the Poetry Porch welcomes formal and informal dialogue.
Joyce Wilson
January 1997
Update June 2009: The Poetry Porch is a literary magazine on the Internet
with an ISSN number on the cover page. It is not a personal Web site, nor is it
a permanent archive of poetry by its contributors.
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