Advertisements in Poems: A Disgrace and Travesty

Hello everyone,

I haven't posted in years, though I'm still subtly active on the website in a much more passive way that I had been in years past, but I found this topic to be important enough to break that trend.

This site has become, for me, a relic of a past age. I look back on poems that my friends and I have written fondly, physically or verbally sharing poems from this website that I'm proud of or excited about with people that I meet. These posted poems are snapshots of us from moments long gone, but beautiful and ever-prescient.

I appreciate that this site has not died, for I would mourn that day no different than the loss of a loved one. Despite preserving my poetry on a personal hard drive (even the hundreds of poems I deleted a few years back when I realized that poetry, to me, was not about chasing a number or fame but about being proud of the quality or importance of the poem), this site holds a uniquely special place in my heart that transcends the words that had been written over 20 years ago.

I also understand this site's need for revenue, as maintaining the servers is becoming more costly than ever. Advertisements are an effective way to do so, although - perhaps more a wish than a need - I would hope that the site would do it in a more tactful manner.

For the meat and potatoes of this post: Advertisements within the verses, lines, and words of our poetry is absolutely disgusting placement that just spits all over the compositions we've so carefully curated. By all means, place ads above or below the poems that we've written because we can completely understand the need to keep the website running for all those, living and passed, whose words we seek to preserve as an epitaph of what once was. But placing the ads within the content, disrupting the flow and jolting us from the worlds we constructed line by line, is a spit into my face, and perhaps every poet on the website (though I dare not speak on anyone else's behalf). This placement goes too far.

I am likely now just an old man yelling at the clouds, but sometimes it's nice to even just pretend we're being heard. After all, to me that's what writing poetry is about, in a nutshell.

Here's to hoping you're all well and that the world hasn't completely destroyed the artist within you - as it is so apt to do.

With all my love,
IdTakeABulletForYou

(P.S. For anyone wanting an example of what I'm talking about, please view this image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hcIsuyN2YxLSrhqKIwem3yydHUjxAGv5/view?usp=sharing taken from my poem, "To Be A Catch" link: https://www.poems-and-quotes.com/poems/1250914)