William F. DeVault
Biographical Information
William F. DeVault became one of the pioneers of the Digital Renaissance when he launched his poetry website, City of Legends, in September 1996. Though already well-known to both the publishing world and the America Online community, City of Legends brought DeVault and his work to a new and broader audience, earning him Yahoo’s “Romantic Poet of the Internet” acknowledgment and drawing over 100,000 Internet users visited the site its first year.With this increased audience, DeVault extended his audience into books, publishing his first collection, PanthEon, through Pantera Press in 1997. PanthEon is a selection of 60 poems culled from a collection of more than 600 poems, written in cycles, to Lauri Jon Elliott, known to the AOL community as PanthrSong. It is a collection deeply and passionate and very erotic, drawing on rich images of Artemis, wild, untamed, prowler of the night, unattainable and dangerous.
He worked with Tim Henson to help establish the Poets Place on AOL, including working with America Online to gain Terms of Service waivers for the Romantic and Erotic Poetry group chats so that poets could freely share and discuss their work, no matter how graphic. When the AOL Writers Club began its own publishing house, DeVault became the first poet to sign with the new company. DeVault also took his poetry on the road, headlining the 1997 Southern Poets Reading Tour.
He and his work have won numerous awards and recognitions, including being named poet of the month by Incognito Café (1997), Poetry Web ring’s Site of the Month (February 1998), Preditors and Editors Online Readers Poll’s Poet and Poem of the Year for “the patchwork skirt of my love” (2001), and being named to the list of 50 outstanding creative artists from West Virginia by the Appalachian Education Initiative. A graduate of Morgantown High School who briefly attended West Virginia University, William F. DeVault currently lives in Morgantown, WV.
Critical Responses
William DeVault has garnered considerable praise and recognition as both a poet and an Internet presence. One reviewer, discussing PanthEon, described DeVault as “a poet of exceptional talent who writes spontaneously without thought or preparation” and commented that he “belongs to the new breed of poets who have found their audience through the Internet. He leads the cyberspace coffeehouses with the virtual reality of his verse, but he spreads classical allusions through his lines like tidbits of sweet meat for his panther.” Poetry Now exclaims “William DeVault’s poetry has a deep, earthy sensuality which entices readers to discover more, slowly becoming immersed in the vivid richness of words.”Writing about From an Unexpected Quarter, one Amazon.com reviewer commented “WFDV returns with an arsenal of words and images destined to be sure evidence that Western culture still has the capacity to re-invent itself, even on the frontier of the Digital Renaissance.” Another Amazon reviewer, commenting on the same collection, remarks
Give it to a lover, give it to a friend, give it to someone who laments the sorry state of modern verse, left to the hands of self-anointed “poets” who are more performing poodles than the iron lion that is William F. DeVault. Just give it, keep it, share it.
Works Published
- PanthEon
- From Out of the City
- From An Unexpected Quarter
- Love Gods of a Forgotten Religion
- 101 Great Love Poems
Selected Bibliography
none available
Author Website
www.cityoflegends.com