Can the soul of a poet live in the cold-wired world of the Internet?

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh and his brother, Alexander, think so. They are doing their part to grace the world's computer monitors with regular helpings of original verse.

Every couple of weeks, they send "The Occasional Screenful: An Edited Electronic Magazine of Short Poetry" to an e-mail list of subscribers scattered along the electronic tentacles of cyberspace.

Each free issue consists of one poem selected by the Volokhs and a law student, Laura Brodbeck, out of contributions from mostly unknown poets. Recent submissions have come from as far as Israel and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

"This is the first [list] of its kind anywhere," said Eugene Volokh, a famous mind on the Westwood campus. Now 27, he was admitted to UCLA at the age of 12 and received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at 15. Alexander graduated two years ago at the age of 19 with degrees in English literature and math economics.

Occasional Screenful is unique among e-mail poetry lists, the Volokhs say, because it is edited. They include a few written guidelines in the magazine:

Poems must generally be rhymed and metered. Preferred length is 16 lines or less, never more than 32 "except for sestinas." Humor? "Generally no, unless it's VERY funny." Limericks? "Absolutely not." Profanity or explicit sexual description? "Generally no, unless the poem is EXTREMELY good."

"Many people don't want to get 10 to 15 poems a day of varying quality," Eugene Volokh said. "Rather than send out 10 things, it's better to send out one thing 10 times as often. In paper you can't do that, but in electronics you can."

A traditional print version of the magazine also would cost several hundred dollars an issue to produce, according to Volokh.

"Everyone likes poetry, but not enough to make it a viable commercial venture," he said.

So, instead, they send it free to their brothers and sisters in poetry on the 'Net. Verse, it seems, is thriving on the Internet.

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World Wide Web sites include works from Allen Ginsberg to Emily Dickinson, ethnic poetry from Turkey and classical Chinese poets, spoken-word recordings and largely anonymous hopeful poets who put up their own verse on a home page.

Will this explosion of poetry in the etherworld of the computer have any impact on Los Angeles--much- maligned as a cultural wasteland?