Some notes...

Robert Archambeau writes an amusing entry about Don Hall's recent accession to the the post of American Poet Laureate. Seems he has a compelling theory that Yvor Winters is controlling the demimonde of American poetry from the grave. Actually, I'm quite happy with Hall's appointment, although I only have a passing acquaintance with his poetry. His essay, Death to the Death of Poetry, positively rocks; it's a vital contribution to the "Can Poetry Matter?" debate which some of you will remember I wrote about at length here and in this Spring's Rock Salt Plum Review.

Lately I've been getting multiple visits on my site meter from a new site called Headlines Poetry, a catalogue of the latest Poetry blog entries painstakingly set up by a pair of curiously dedicated souls. I wonder whether this one will become something of a means of exchange in Poetryblogland or will peter out.... I also wonder if some kind of automatic feed mechanism keeps it going on automatic. (It looks like that: the site updates ongoingly and has no archives.) In the meantime, I appreciate the selfless effort, automatic or no.

I myself seem to have been spending more time looking at my site meter than reading more useful things like poetry lately. Visits from an Unknown Country have died down, for reasons as mysterious as they sprang up in such great numbers. But someone in Tajikistan is giving me daily visits, an unknown country for me until he or she came knocking at my cyberdoor. Saturday, for obvious reasons, is a relatively dead day in the virtual world -- too many things to do in the so-called real world. On my tombstone some day: He Watched His Site Meter.

The Festival de Poesia de Costa Rica is over. It seems to have been a resounding success. I've left Norberto, it's chief organizer, a few days to overcome the effects -- and now, at last, we're working on the final touches of the definitive edition of Undressing the Night (selected poems of Francisco Santos, trans. by yours truly)... I expect it will be finally out by the end of the summer. At last...