Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

Hermit Crabs Don’t Cry to Politics and Deviations
From: Charles Bernstein
Subject: Hermit Crabs Don’t Cry
On one of my frequent trips to the Folded Place inside the Ethernet’s Thirteenth
Passage, with the new translation into Idiophone of Moses Maimonides’s
Guide for the Perplexed in my left hand, I had occasion to jot down some rules
of conduct (not so much community standards as uncommunity striations) into
my Blake’s Newton Feelpad (TM pending) (a pad is after all a kind of home, or
used to be). The Feelpad, as many of you will know (and I use the word "you"
carelessly), is able to convert inner feeling processes into linguistic signs. The
protocols of the Blake’s Newton Feelpad do not allow me to review the file
before downloading directly onto your screens (and I also use the word "your"
carelessly):
All of these proposed Listserve Rules will be enforced through a fully
automated new version of the Youngman Listserve Program (Henney 33.95).
As I am sure you will agree (and I use "you" loosely), Total Automation of rule
enforcement is the only way to ensure fair and impartial Rule Maintenance:
1. Postings on Poetics@UBVM shall be neither in prose or verse. Rather, all
postings shall conform to shifting character/line formats, announced
periodically on the list. Initially, lines shall have at least 43 and no more than
51 characters; hyphenation is discouraged.
2. No messages shall be posted between :43 and :52 minutes after the hour.
3. All postings shall be made from "Dos"-type platforms; Apple users may post
from "IBM"-type computers but the graphic orientation of Macs make these
environments inappropriate for Poetics postings.
4. You have to sound 30 or show ID.
5. On the third Friday of every month, only short "chat" messages to friends on
the list may be posted. For those without, or who no longer have, friends on the
list, a message service will be available to provide names of friends as well as
appropriate messages.