HIS WEBSITE is something of an experiment for me. I've been writing poems throughout my adult life, and like any poet I came to the point where I wanted to see my work in print. I come from a family of book lovers and was brought up to respect a book as an artifact and as a thing of beauty. I wanted to be able to hold in my hand a book of poems I had written, to open it and have its attractively-designed pages lie flat. I am not interested in ephemera; I want a book—even a slim volume—to have a certain heft. Yes, I'm sure I doodled on my school books, but I was making them my own.

I mention books as objects at the very time when such objects may become the stuff of nostalgia. At least half of what I read each day, I read on a computer screen. This, I suspect is where most people read. I gave up newspapers years ago, but I still think that literature is best recorded in ink printed on paper. Moth and rust corrupt, but for archeologists paper has proved as durable as pottery. Digital texts are less durable, of course, but the very fact that this gossamer can be blown away or modified may not be a disaster; indeed, you can expect me to edit what is posted here. The website will have a life of its own, and I will be able to respond to whatever criticism you choose to send me.

Apart from a couple of things in my high-school magazine, the first poem I published was privately printed, along with a poem from each of my closest friends—Ted Blodgett and John Woolley—in a six-page, rag-paper pamphlet, signed copies of which were offered to people attending our first public reading. That occasion, in Aix-en-Provence in 1961, set the pattern for the next forty-five years, the only difference being that I decided I would never again pay someone to print my words. For one thing, I didn't have the funds; for another, I wanted to put faith in the validation that comes from a jury of fellow poets, men and women of discriminating taste. I resisted the more jaundiced view that getting into print might involve getting into bed with people whose aims as readers and editors are primarily to further their own careers as writers—fame rather than fortune being their spur.

The long and the short of it has been that—until now—I have kept to the straight and narrow, dutifully submitting poems at first to literary quarterlies and eventually to book publishers. In this, my sole principle was to submit work only to venues that contained work by writers I respected. (I want to be in that number when the saints come marching in!) Like hundreds of others, I have had to write checks for reader's fees, without which there would be no literary prizes. I know how this lottery works. As a teenager who had lost all his pocket money playing black-jack, I had to raffle non-existent bank notes from time to time. Actually, though it would be nice to earn enough to buy printer ink, the only prize we want is to be read and, if the gods are in the mood, to get some good reviews. Not because good reviews sell (poets should not expect to make a profit) but because poets should not mutter into an echo chamber hearing nothing but the sound of their own voice. Much as I like books, the book is the musical score that has to be performed in a reader's head if the poems are to be alive.

The shift from print to pixels that this website celebrates will, I hope, bring pleasure to you and also give me the satisfaction of learning that I have piqued your interest. I hope you will bookmark it and send it to your friends.

By all means download whatever you want, but as everything here is my intellectual property you will be expected to keep my name attached to everything you borrow from the site.

— Brian Taylor