Ram Devineni, founder of Rattapallax Press, will be remembered best as a literary book publisher in on the ground floor of electronic publishing, as well as the new internationalism afoot. Rattapallax (www.rattapallax.com) started out as a poetry journal, which in 1999 Devineni launched--in short order--into national and international distribution.

"My philosophy," he says,

and eventually the press's approach to poetry, was to make poetry accessible to the public without reducing it's substance. I determined to publish the first issue like a rock concert or major political campaign. We would become a national publication with our first issue and not wait for the gradual progression. I set up 35 readings in 25 cities around the US and spent a lot of money on advertising. The journal was professionally printed and the accompanying CD was pressed with an imprint. It looked like a book that people would want to buy. We had our launch reading at the Mid-Manhattan library in New York and in about two months read all over the City, Boston, Philadelphia, Camden, Princeton, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and at 11 venues in Los Angeles in 5 days. The magazine was picked up by three distributors and available in about 200 bookstores around the country. With the second issue (2000 copies) we were making a profit, which is almost unheard of in poetry publishing.

Devineni also became the coordinator of an international poetry series arranged through the United Nations, titled "Dialogue Among Civilizations" (www.dialoguepoetry.org) which offered 160 readings held starting on March 30, 2001 in 130 cities around the world, including readings from Antarctica and from atop Mt. Everest. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa was joined by renown author, Joyce Carol Oates, plus Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and James Ragan for an evening of "Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry" to kick off the series at the United Nations in New York City.