A Walk in the Woods

A L U M N I P R O F I L EA H i t o f P o e t r yA N E W P O E T D A I L Y A T D O N S E L B Y ’ S [ ’ 7 4 ] P O E M S . C O MGARY STOTTLEMYERDON SELBY RUNS POETRY DAILY AT WWW.POEMS.COM,A NONPROFIT COMPANY FEATURING THE WORK OF ADIFFERENT CONTEMPORARY POET DAILY.S W A R T H M O R E C O L L E G E B U L L E T I NWhen he graduated from Swarthmore,Don Selby had no idea that 25 yearslater he’d be running what is probably themost popular Web site around devotedentirely to contemporary poetry.Poetry Daily (PD), at www.poems.com (orwww.poetrydaily.org), is a nonprofit companythat features the work of a different contemporarypoet each day. It also keeps anarchive of poets, provides links to articlesabout poetry published in major print-mediaoutlets, and is linked to Amazon.com—sovisitors can order books by featured poetswith a couple of clicks of the mouse. PD,funded almost entirely by individuals’ donations(don’t let the “dot.com” fool you!),boasts 45 million yearly hits and 3 millionyearly “visits” (a measure of the number ofpeople who stay at the Web site for anylength of time). It has 19,000 subscribers toits weekly e-mail newsletter. “Poets, students,academics, and wannabes,” says Selby, whofounded the site with two partners, DianeBoller and Rob Anderson, in 1997, “but alsoheavy equipment operators, designers, militarymen and women, software professionals,unemployed persons, and lawyers and doctorswho tell us they sign on to redeem theirday! We get mail from South Dakota! India!Even a research ship in Antartica!”PD’s stated mission: “To make it easier forpeople to find poets and poetry they like, andto help publishers bring news of their books,magazines, and journals to more people.”A self-described “last-minute English major”in college, Selby is not a poet himself. “Mylast effort was for my junior high magazine.No way to surpass that accomplishment, so Igave it up.”From Swarthmore, he went directly to theUniversity of Virginia’s law school but neverpracticed law. Instead, he got a job with asmall Charlottesville legal publishing company,which eventually became part of LEXIS-NEXIS, the massive on- and off-line lawand-businesspublications company. Towardthe end of his 20-year tenure there, he got totalking with an employee—Boller—who wasinterested in contemporary poetry. They hadboth noticed how difficult it was to find contemporarypoetry collections and journalseven in the best bookstores. “We started talkingabout what could happen for poetry, howwe could get it a wider audience,” says Selby.“And that’s how Poetry Daily began.”Selby, who is currently the site’s only fulltimeemployee, says they have not donemuch self-promotion. “But we were on-lineearly, and it turns out poetry is one of themost searched-for things on the Web. We gotour URL early enough that we got “poems.-com,” and we had experience designing sites,so we knew how to make it easy for searchengines to find us. Early on, cultural editorsat newspapers were browsing around to seewhat was happening on the Web.The NewYork Times, the Times of London, and the WallStreet Journal found us and did articles.” PDis now on most poetry book and journal publishers’review copy lists, and every time thesite features a poet, “we immediately get agigantic new network of their friends, family,and fellow poets.”Now, says Selby, the only problem is whatto do with the massive mountain of poetrybooks piling up in his basement, with dozensmore coming in weekly.—Daisy Fried ’8962