Agnieszka's Dowry
Encyclopedia
Agnieszka's Dowry is an American
online and print
poetry journal
.
AgD is published in Chicago
by A Small Garlic Press, since March 8, 1996.
s featuring graphics and poetry texts, including the up-to-date partial-content of any issue still open for submissions, as well as the full content of the closed issues—as an expanding permanent web installation.
Agnieszka's Dowry print
version, mirroring strictly the online textual content, appears as a chapbook
series.
This is why both versions share the same ISSN
and formally differ only through the assigned unique ISBN
designating each chapbook.
In print, Agnieszka's Dowry content appears as alphabetized-by-author texts, while online the poems are grouped and sequenced for contextual effects and deliberately engineered interplay.
Graphically, however, the online issues organize their content as hypertext
in a series of circularly linked poems lodged in rooms. All the rooms are directly accessible from the magazine's front page, in addition to being accessible via other hypertext links involving A Small Garlic Press's online catalog of chapbooks. Within the rooms, the links to individual texts are obscured/represented by art and graphics, yet once reading any one text, the navigation is made explicit to the user and made regular immediately below each text, allowing for rapid, predictable browsing. Despite the deliberate obfuscation with rich graphics on room entry, the online issue is optimized for textual browsing using the Lynx
web browser
, in fact, in a way that does not involve the use of the mouse or the tab to navigate through the content, just the spacebar and carriage return/enter. The online version strives to be user agent
-neutral.
These design and use dichotomies (rich graphical content vs. a textual browsing-optimized web installation; a permanent online installation vs. paper chapbook publication) are maintained consistently throughout.
As of 2009 Agnieszka's Dowry has appeared in 14 online issues (Issue 14 remains partly populated, remaining open for additional submissions) and 13 printed issues/chapbooks (Issues 2 & 3 were combined as one paper volume). The online version is freely accessible.
The arbitrary pace of expanding, never contracting, of Agnieszka's Dowry, is underscored by the 2002 date of the Issue 14 timestamps: There are two kinds of timestamps used throughout the Agnieszka's Dowry website. The earliest one and once written, never changed, is the Created at timestamp. Its integrity is enforced unconditionally and demanded by Library of Congress, as condition of assigning an ISSN common to both versions,
The other timestamp, a more everyday, familiar mechanism, is the Updated last tag. It will reflect the last edit done by a human. It, too, is enforced, but only through the anarchy and self-moderation of its maintainers, So far, its maintainers have been, working together or alone, LeeAnn Heringer and Marek Ługowski.
Credit for maintenance, design, and implementation is given explicitly throughout the online installation. The entire crediting mechanism, be it authors, maintainers, editors, administrators, or any other future conceivable complication, are always specifically and lucidly presented on the very page.
This design has not changed, has resisted pressure for updating, and remains the same, since it was architected by Heringer and Lugowski,
The timiestamps are maintained only by hand.
Another idiosyncratic albeit infrequent type of submission is tendering a well-known classic poem followed by the submitter's new original text, offered as juxtaposition. Accepted instances include a brief take-off on Christina Rossetti
's long poem "Goblin Market
" (the complete text is of course included), a free-verse meditation dovetailing with the "Holy Sonnet #14" by John Donne
, and an English-language invention on Catullus
' erotic poem "Number 51
" (submitted in the original Latin
), itself inspired by Sappho
's Ancient Greek
(Aeolic
) fragment Sappho 31
.
A more frequent idiosyncratic installation is that of several poems presented as a sequence. Among such sequences, there is one Letter to Agnieszka comprising a series of letters, as well as sequences of contemporary English language haiku
written by North America
n haikuists (the entire Issue 12, and elsewhere).
Singularly, a technical essay "Forms in English Haiku" by the late Japanese
and American
haikuist Keiko Imaoka is featured in Issue 5. Her own haiku sequence, "Super K-mart", is lodged in Agnieszka's Dowry Issue 1.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
online and print
DocuTech
DocuTech is the name given to a line of electronic production-publishing systems produced by Xerox Corporation. DocuTech and Xerox are registered trademarks of Xerox Corporation....
poetry journal
Literary magazine
A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...
.
AgD is published in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
by A Small Garlic Press, since March 8, 1996.
Online and printed version commonalities and differences
Online AgD appears as a set of interconnected web pageWeb page
A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...
s featuring graphics and poetry texts, including the up-to-date partial-content of any issue still open for submissions, as well as the full content of the closed issues—as an expanding permanent web installation.
Agnieszka's Dowry print
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
version, mirroring strictly the online textual content, appears as a chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
series.
This is why both versions share the same ISSN
International Standard Serial Number
An International Standard Serial Number is a unique eight-digit number used to identify a print or electronic periodical publication. Periodicals published in both print and electronic form may have two ISSNs, a print ISSN and an electronic ISSN...
and formally differ only through the assigned unique ISBN
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering code created by Gordon Foster, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H...
designating each chapbook.
In print, Agnieszka's Dowry content appears as alphabetized-by-author texts, while online the poems are grouped and sequenced for contextual effects and deliberately engineered interplay.
Graphically, however, the online issues organize their content as hypertext
Hypertext
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the...
in a series of circularly linked poems lodged in rooms. All the rooms are directly accessible from the magazine's front page, in addition to being accessible via other hypertext links involving A Small Garlic Press's online catalog of chapbooks. Within the rooms, the links to individual texts are obscured/represented by art and graphics, yet once reading any one text, the navigation is made explicit to the user and made regular immediately below each text, allowing for rapid, predictable browsing. Despite the deliberate obfuscation with rich graphics on room entry, the online issue is optimized for textual browsing using the Lynx
Lynx (web browser)
Lynx is a text-based web browser for use on cursor-addressable character cell terminals and is very configurable.-Usage:Browsing in Lynx consists of highlighting the chosen link using cursor keys, or having all links on a page numbered and entering the chosen link's number. Current versions support...
web browser
Web browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
, in fact, in a way that does not involve the use of the mouse or the tab to navigate through the content, just the spacebar and carriage return/enter. The online version strives to be user agent
User agent
In computing, a user agent is a client application implementing a network protocol used in communications within a client–server distributed computing system...
-neutral.
These design and use dichotomies (rich graphical content vs. a textual browsing-optimized web installation; a permanent online installation vs. paper chapbook publication) are maintained consistently throughout.
As of 2009 Agnieszka's Dowry has appeared in 14 online issues (Issue 14 remains partly populated, remaining open for additional submissions) and 13 printed issues/chapbooks (Issues 2 & 3 were combined as one paper volume). The online version is freely accessible.
The arbitrary pace of expanding, never contracting, of Agnieszka's Dowry, is underscored by the 2002 date of the Issue 14 timestamps: There are two kinds of timestamps used throughout the Agnieszka's Dowry website. The earliest one and once written, never changed, is the Created at timestamp. Its integrity is enforced unconditionally and demanded by Library of Congress, as condition of assigning an ISSN common to both versions,
The other timestamp, a more everyday, familiar mechanism, is the Updated last tag. It will reflect the last edit done by a human. It, too, is enforced, but only through the anarchy and self-moderation of its maintainers, So far, its maintainers have been, working together or alone, LeeAnn Heringer and Marek Ługowski.
Credit for maintenance, design, and implementation is given explicitly throughout the online installation. The entire crediting mechanism, be it authors, maintainers, editors, administrators, or any other future conceivable complication, are always specifically and lucidly presented on the very page.
This design has not changed, has resisted pressure for updating, and remains the same, since it was architected by Heringer and Lugowski,
The timiestamps are maintained only by hand.
Idiosyncratic submissions sought
An idiosyncratic type of submission sought is the occasional Letter to Agnieszka, which apart from embodying a form of poetic/short prose expression in well-crafted letter form indirectly conjures/invents Agnieszka.Another idiosyncratic albeit infrequent type of submission is tendering a well-known classic poem followed by the submitter's new original text, offered as juxtaposition. Accepted instances include a brief take-off on Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
Christina Georgina Rossetti was an English poet who wrote a variety of romantic, devotional, and children's poems...
's long poem "Goblin Market
Goblin Market
"Goblin Market" is a narrative poem by Christina Rossetti. In a letter to her publisher, Rossetti claimed that the poem, which features remarkably sexual imagery, was not meant for children. However, in public Rossetti often stated that the poem was intended for children, and went on to write...
" (the complete text is of course included), a free-verse meditation dovetailing with the "Holy Sonnet #14" by John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
, and an English-language invention on Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
' erotic poem "Number 51
Catullus 51
Catullus 51 is a poem by the Roman famous love poet Gaius Valerius Catullus . It is an adaptation of one of Sappho's fragmentary lyric poems, Sappho 31. Catullus replaces Sappho's beloved with his own beloved Lesbia. Unlike the majority of Catullus' poems, the meter of this poem is the sapphic...
" (submitted in the original Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
), itself inspired by Sappho
Sappho
Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...
's Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
(Aeolic
Aeolic Greek
Aeolic Greek is a linguistic term used to describe a set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia , Thessaly, and in the Aegean island of Lesbos and the Greek colonies of Asia Minor ....
) fragment Sappho 31
Sappho 31
Sappho 31 is a poem by Ancient Greek poet Sappho of Lesbos. It is also known as phainetai moi after the opening words of its first line, or Lobel-Page 31, Voigt 31, Gallavotti 2, Diehl 2, Bergk 2, after the location of the poem in various editions containing the collected works of Sappho...
.
A more frequent idiosyncratic installation is that of several poems presented as a sequence. Among such sequences, there is one Letter to Agnieszka comprising a series of letters, as well as sequences of contemporary English language haiku
Haiku
' , plural haiku, is a very short form of Japanese poetry typically characterised by three qualities:* The essence of haiku is "cutting"...
written by North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
n haikuists (the entire Issue 12, and elsewhere).
Singularly, a technical essay "Forms in English Haiku" by the late Japanese
Japanese people
The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...
and American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
haikuist Keiko Imaoka is featured in Issue 5. Her own haiku sequence, "Super K-mart", is lodged in Agnieszka's Dowry Issue 1.
Editors and contributors
Agnieszka's Dowry is co-edited by Marek Lugowski and katrina grace craig. Great majority of the content is contemporary non-haiku English-language poetry submitted from across the world. Agnieszka's Dowry never describes its contributors. Its content is exclusively the accepted texts and author names (in the print version), while online—additionally—renditions of artists' works and their names.External links
- Agnieszka's Dowry
- "Forms in English Haiku" by Keiko Imaoka, AgD Issue 5, 1996 (technical essay)