Archive Off-Limits

Reading is a free pleasure. Reading online is even freer, or at least it should be. CPRW.com (Contemporary Poetry Review), however, turns reading into a race for access, allowing the general public to view only their current articles and reviews. The losers must pay a subscription fee to access Cprw's valuable archives. Granted, the site is worth much more than your average blog or poetry fan site, but the restricted access is in itself nearly annoying enough to divert my attention to a less accredited site like HgPoetics. No barricades there. No esteem, either. But a middle ground between accreditation and accessibility can be found in online newspapers like the NYTimes Book Reviews, that offer a massive collection of archived and browsable articles for free.