I'm always investigating websites devoted to writing and in doing so I've been amazed by the number of internet enclaves catering to poets. I am, admittedly, no judge of poetry. Even as an adolescent I didn't versify, which shows what a weirdo I am.

So I hope any writers of verse who are serious about the undertaking won't be offended when I say that many of the poems on these internet sites strike me as being designed more as personal display than communication. (OK, a peacock is communicating something when it unfurls its tail...) A lot of the self-styled poets seem to believe it is admirable to set out in short,choppy and unpunctuated, lines, matters better kept private. (They also think it constitues poetry...)

However, context is everything, and if you are one of the first women to indulge in this genre, than you may become part of literary history.

Rogue Classicism mentions an article in Redlands Daily Facts about the first century B.C. Roman poet Sulpicia, the daughter of a senator, whose six surviving poems were written in the course of a forbidden love affair.

The translated poems are short ( I also came across a BBC story about a newer translation) and consist of sentiments such as:

At last the love I've waited for has come.
...
I'm glad I did it -- why wear a prudish mask,
as if he wasn't good enough for me!

They read like what any average love struck teen (or middle-aged teen-at-heart with an internet connection) would write today. Which makes them interesting sociologically. A classicist would have to explain to me the literary merit.

I'm guessing that sometimes the "classics" are classic and sometimes they are just what survives.