Simon DeDeo writes some interesting advice to poetry bloggers. Much of it I agree with; some of it I don't (i.e. is serifed print really easier on the eyes? or just his eyes?).

An additional discovery -- purely technical one for your bloggers out there -- is that if you click on "edit Html" (upper right hand corner in Blogger) when creating a post, you can paste copy directly from Word or even possibly your email program without screwing up formatting, which tends to happen if you paste it directly into Compose with all its format presets. Just discovered this the other day. (Before when I had to do this I was pasting into Notebook and then into Compose -- a tedious two-step process.)

RRS feeds is something I definitely have to explore. And the site meter, to continue to be of any validity at all, has to reflect their use. (Right now, I don't think it does -- does it?)

Watch out for a change from a black blog, by the way.

40,000

My site meter just told me I surpassed 40,000 visits since shortly after this blog was begun. But look at the weird spike in my graph! (This image was taken just at the end of March, when it was most symmetrical.) The reason for the sudden jump is a passing hyperlinked reference (actually a dead link) to what is perhaps the most famous image by a certain flaxen-haired NY artist who famously speculated about everyone someday having 15 minutes of fame. (Fame, fame, fame... if he goes unnamed here, I think you'll see why.) Because of the link, my blog became the first on a list of Google Images for said image. Almost immediately, I started getting storms of hits from all over the world, although mostly from Britain. After I threw in a couple of soup can images to satisfy the hunger, the tide became a tsunami. In July and August I didn't post at all, yet recorded record numbers of hits. In September, I was getting as many as 400 Google visits a day for that single purpose. I figure I got as many as 12,000 in about three months and a half. Then, some time in October, visits plummeted back to normal. The reason: Google had bumped me down the list for said image, and whew -- what a relief! once again I could actually see on my site meter traces of fellow bloggers and researchers accessing this blog for its express purpose.

So these seemingly high numbers are, well, artificially inflated. Grossly inflated. As are most such numbers on the net.

Just switched to the New Blogger software, and so far, in almost all respects, I give it a glowing review.

Publishing is now instantaneous (no longer do you have to look at that cursed wheel going round and round and round) and the dashboard and editing layouts generally better arranged. The most exciting feature of this software is that you can label the post (as below) according to any hyperlinked category you want. The effect of this is that earlier posts are no longer pushed into an archival nether world once they fall behind the current display. Anyone Googling or otherwise accessing any post can gain instant access to others in your blog on the same or similar topics. For bloggers, too, it will lead to a different and more flexible kind of referencing to their own work: passing allusions to what they said previously on the topic, with an invite to simply click on the label below, etc.

This evening, I spent about four hours in editing mode, giving labels to my posts, and so far, have done nearly half of them. It's the kind of job you want to do all at once, while your memory of categories you have come up with is fresh. But with some 380 posts, well, it's a task I'll have to finish in stages...

The advantages clearly outweigh the disadvantages, but if I were to redesign the label feature, I'd put it in a less conspicuous place -- perhaps in a slightly smaller font just under the POSTED BY/COMMENTS line. Labels shouldn't have the last word, as it were.

On the isolation of poets -- and blogs as symptomatic of the problem.

Take that!

A bit of pro-blogging hype that I came across in the Washington Monthly archives:

INCREASE YOUR IQ BY BLOGGING!....If you're a blogger and your significant other ever gives you grief about the amount of time you spend on your hobby, this post called "Brain of the Blogger" is for you. It's written by a pair of doctors who are "strong advocates for neurologically-based approaches to learning," and they've written a post crediting blogging with doing everything short of curing cancer. Blogs promote critical thinking, analytical thinking, creative thinking, intuitive thinking, associational thinking, and analogical thinking. Blogs also increase access and exposure to quality information and combine the best of solitary reflection and social interaction. Take that, video games!

And take that, significant other!

When priorities sleep...

"When virtue sleeps, she wakes refreshed," said Nietzsche. So what about this elephant?

It was good to put more time (and some money) over the last two weeks where my mouth is: wrote/revised several poems (came up with at least one good one), did more send-outs. Also read most of William Carlos Williams' Selected, half a novel by Nicole Brossard, finished The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra (which I liked much better than Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, which, by the way, I reviewed, and more or less panned, here), much Hart Crane, and... we aquired a new feline, a year-old Tortoise-shell we call Misha, to fill in the bleak hole left by Pasha, the one who passed away. (Picture forthcoming...) And I am refreshed. Writing blog posts can be at times remarkably time-consuming... after spending about two precious hours serving the memory of memories of Ginsburg (pesky formatting problems unexpectedly prolonged that affair), I began to wonder whose priorities I was serving (certainly not mine), and decided I needed a break. Anyway. Back in the saddle. (Do elephants ride in saddles? We'll see in the months to come...)

CHASMS

After some 20-odd hours of work (actually it's very hard to estimate the length of time, what with my pacing around, general distractedness -- 14 hours? 25 hours?), the article I've written for the Rock Salt Plum Review, "Can Poetry Matter?": 15 Years Later, is just about done. It was much harder than I imagined, weaving the rough, weedy patches of four meandering blog posts into the smooth, rolled lawn of a continuous article. Just the act of pasting the four posts together in consecutive order -- with the first post at the top and the last at the bottom, rather than the reverse as they appear in this blog, lead to some glaring revelations about form -- just how Blogger format shapes the conventions by which we cobble our posts together, and just how tangential blogs inherently are. Although the entries seemed quite polished per se, suddenly, imagining them out of this personal context and under the masthead of that review, a good deal of my chattiness seemed impertinent, language lazy, and references unacceptably imprecise -- and yet I still wanted to preserve the wit, playfulness -- and at least some of the informality -- of the original.

Good news is, I think I've managed to do so. There may even be more wit in the article version. The title still seems a bit clunky. Maybe I'll come up with a better one. (If something strikes you, let me know...)

In a matter of hours, my server (Bell Sympatico, which has been rather Antipatico with me) will be disconnected; Videotron will be installed Monday morning, and I'll be without internet for almost two days. I expect I'll suffer nervous tremours, skittishness, hot fevers, the whole bit -- that at certain moments, I'll be looking and feeling rather like the Simpson girl below. Wish me luck as I cross the chasm of incommunicado.

PS. Hmm... "Can Poetry Matter?": 15 Years After That's catchier. At least, it rhymes. (Sally Potter would approve. So would Dr. Seuss....)

CAN POETRY MATTER? debate Part 2

A couple of posts down I wondered if anyone had made a substantial contribution to the “Can Poetry Matter” debate since Gioia. I appreciate the comments I did receive, but no one has yet responded to the question. That’s hardly surprising: apart from the advent of the internet, which has lead to an explosion of writing by poets about poetry (in blogs such as this one, for one) some interesting new outlets of publication, not to mention intriguing (to some) Google-based techniques and poetries – i.e. flarf -- the climate of poetry, particularly print-based poetry, continues pretty much the same and the trends unabated, so not much more need be said: the same institutions dominate, as do the same writing programs and journals; MFA poets keep being churned out by the thousands, prizes have proliferated to the point where it practically seems a distinction not to have won one, and contemporary poetry continues to be all but ignored in major media. A poetry world that could once be described as balkanized is now atomized; now we're going into poetry's sub-atomic age, I suppose.

Nevertheless, to satisfy my own curiosity I decided answer my question myself, by simply typing “Can Poetry Matter” into Google and seeing what came up.

In a 1997 article entitled Does Poetry Matter: The Culture of Poetry, originally a talk at a Raven Chronicles poetry forum, poet Bart Baxter starts off in an amusing fashion:

Before I begin my prepared remarks, let me ask for a show of hands in the audience, a scrupulously honest show of hands. How many of you here tonight are poets? [Half the audience raised hands.] How many of you would like to be a poet, have maybe written some verse, are looking for a publisher? [1/4 raised hands.] And how many here are friends of the moderator or someone on the panel? [1/4 raised hands.] Now, everyone in the audience who did not fall into any one of those three categories, who did not raise your hands before, please raise your hands now. [One hand was raised.]

I think if Dana Gioia were here tonight, he would simply say: I rest my case.

In this short article, Baxter gives a good synopsis of Gioia’s main points in Can Poetry Matter, and describes also how his opinion has since changed since writing that article:

Dana Gioia wrote "Can Poetry Matter?" long before he realized what was going on in the urban centers across the country, in the night clubs and cabarets, at the Greenmill Tavern in Chicago and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, at the open readings and poetry slams. In a lecture he presented at Poets House in New York on October 26 [1995], which became an essay published in Poetry Flash, "Notes Toward a New Bohemia," his greatest fears about the future of poetry seem to be assuaged.

Everyone likes to sound authoritative in his opinions, but it’s getting harder and harder these days to say anything authoritative about anything. We have to give Gioia an E (Excellent) for Effort. In Bohemia, Gioia concludes along these lines (quoting again from the Baxter article):

The primary means of publication of new poetry is now oral. This applies to older established poets as well as new unknowns.

2. This represents an enormous paradigm shift away from print culture, in that:
a. The government is neither involved with subsidizing events nor appointing particular poets.
b. The physical audience listening to poetry greatly outnumbers the people who read poetry in books. (Do we need one more professor to tell us that the important thing is whether the poem will translate from the "stage to the page"?).

3. This is a populist revolution, a distinct move from print to oral tradition, largely among groups long alien to the traditional, dominant, literary, academic culture:
a. e.g., rap lyrics, in music and poetry.
b. Cowboy poetry.
c. Poetry slams.

4. Surprisingly, most of this new populist poetry is formal:
a. e.g., the four-stress lines in rap.
b. The English ballad form in cowboy poetry.
c. The merger of poetry and experimental theater in performance poetry at poetry slams often uses elaborate rhyme schemes.

5. As for the University, an institution better equipped to preserve old culture than foster the creation of new art, it will probably hold on dearly to Modernism, and will continue to do so until Post-modern poetry's last gasp.

Anyway, I have more to report, particularly from the side that finds the whole debate tedious as hell, that says poetry is just fine on the margins. Attitudes I also appreciate, in my way. But I’m running out of steam here, and this post is has gotten rather long. Stay tuned.

RIGHT ON

Surfing around, looking for new poetry blogs and sites that might interest me, I found this one which captured my attention the other day. Unfortunately (for me at least) after two years, its author, Dale Smith, has recently decided to put it to rest. In his parting reflections, Smith expresses with extraordinary eloquence pretty much my own "blogging philosophy", as well as mixed feelings about blogging itself:

The blog medium itself disturbs me. To do it right requires a considerable amount of self-investment. The blogs I admire--Rue Hazard, Wood's Lot, Texfiles, Orpheus in Boxers, Equanimity, Third Factory--manage to make connections that are thoughtful, understated, and arranged in ways that reveal the state of the art with transpersonal values. I mean, poetics is central, not the person behind the blog. And I have a fairly extended notion of "poetics." I don't mean a person isn't present behind these sites, but "person" is an instrument toward some greater agency beyond their own limited field range. These are trustworthy observers of the state of the art because the blog medium is arranged formally--according to each distinct perception--to reveal something we didn't know before.

Too many blogs wallow in in the pigsty of personhood. Instead of making an instrument of themselves, they are vacuums of attention. While picking on Silliman's blog is hardly new or useful, one thing about his that has not been mentioned elsewhere is the commitment to Enlightenment rationality. His blog prose at times is equivalent to Sir James Mackintosh, the 19th c. lecturer who Coleridge excoriated in letters and private notation. Silliman's ongoing history of the "post-avant" po scene is terrific, in its way, but you have to endure the discursive prose and categorical feather-fluffings.

Blogs that reveal a situation and that work according to the diverse motivations behind the scene are useful tools or gauges through which we can evaluate the larger field. A commitment to that should be commended, but it is a time-consuming and challenging task to use the blog with such force and attention.

Yep, you bet. If I have any difference with the above, it's the perhaps excessive value Dale gives to "understatedness". I'm still youthful (immature?) enough to be turned on by an "over the top" blog as long as it's fired by raw, brimming insight. (Usually the insight is short-lived, though...)

Right now the benefits -- all that I'm learning about contemporary poetry and poets, the opportunity to hone what were once rusty writing skills, the delight of posting articles and reaching an audience immediately -- outweigh the drawbacks, particularly the amount of time it takes, time that could be better spent writing and revising more poetry, reading books, even sending out to reviews. (C. Dale Young is apt in calling his blog "Avoiding the Muse".)

But who knows how long that will last? It seems recently that a number of poetry blogs have petered out after about two years' dedicated output -- and two years does seem a reasonable amount of time to be doing this sort of thing. (Hey, I'm approaching that... Woodwork started on Blog City in May, 2004.) Quite a few writers -- off the top of my head I can thinkof A.D.T. , Eduardo Corral, Emily Lloyd, Simon Dedeo, Henry Gould -- have dramatically pulled the plug only to come back a few weeks or months later. Of the blogs Smith mentions above, only Wood's Lot, Equanimity and Tex Files are still operating, and the latter, at least at first glance, seems to have devolved into exactly the kind of personal pigsty he detests. (This I find is an all-too-common tendency...)

Whatever a poetry blog is, to deserve my time it's gotta be educational -- a product of intellectual discipline, a process of evolving insight, a sharing of literary discovery. All the blogs among my current fav's, to varying degrees, fit that description. A great many of the others do too ... although for one reason or another they have either failed or ceased to snare my attention the way those "top blogs" do. (The "faves" list changes pretty much on a monthly basis, by the way.) If ever I start posting frequently about my cats or the contents of my room or what my girlfriend and I did today, I'd appreciate it if at least one of you out there gently suggest I unplug all life-support systems and put this basket case out of its misery.

OF DIARY BLOGS

Most diary blogs are of little interest to me -- like Ron Silliman, (I found this entry foraging in the back issues) I usually prefer blogs as an intellectual discipline, source of information, etc. But occasionally a diary-type blog comes up on my radar that is so exceptionally well-written that it proves to be . . . well, an exception.

Last year, when I was on the rolls of Blog-City, I came across a blog called Land of the Blind. It was so gripping and so beautifully written, it is no exaggeration to say that reading it seemed like watching a Pulitzer Prize-worthy novel unfold before my eyes. (No, it is not to be confused with a current blockbuster crime thriller by the same name.) Be-jeezus, some passages took my breath away! I wrote the guy to tell him that if I were Harper Collins or the like, I would send him a hundred thousand dollar advance with a contract proposal... Unfortunately (for us readers at least), as so often happens with extremely "hot blogs", it suddenly vanished into cybersmoke: without much warning, guy pressed DELETE on the whole affair. The blog did get very close to the emotional bone -- it was a surruptitious confessional detailing the stages of a breakup with his wife, and the emotional rollercoaster leading to his own nervous breakdown ... I actually saved quite a few entries on my own hard drive, and am tempted to just post one or two that don't get too personal (after all, I can't ask his permission -- but he did write many extraordinary musings and reflections too) to show how good such blog writing can be.

Blaugustine is written on a much more even keel... (This one I discovered thanks to Emily Lloyd's blog-roll...) No, it is not P-Prize material, but it is very well written and illustrated. The diary of Paris-based artist and illustrator Natalie Arbeloff , it is a veritable feast for the eyes... one of the most gorgeous blogs on the net. Under a lovely pastel (acrylic?) illustrating the subject (you have to go to the blog to see it), here are some reflections from May 17:

The African presence in Paris is nowhere more evident or more vibrant than on the RER platforms of the Gare du Nord and on the commuter trains. On my way to and from the suburbs where my aunt and uncle were hospitalised, I was enchanted by the spectacle of ordinary Africans going about their daily lives dressed in dazzling exotic plumage, colours that we consider clashing, patterns we disdain as garish, fabrics knotted and draped every which way over solidly curvaceous bodies in glorious, cacophonous harmony. Birds of paradise glowing against a background of concrete, steel and soot. I don't know their individual stories, where they came from, what they feel about living in France, whether they're happy or miserable or resigned. But compared to them, the rest of us seem to be in some kind of uniform, whether it's designer grunge, designer chic or just plain drab global sameness. The Africans in Europe (at least those who don't dress "like everyone else") wear their continent on their bodies and I for one am grateful to them for bringing such joy to my jaded eyes.

Here in Montreal we also see such Africans (mostly they come from from places like Senegal, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso), evidently not in such great numbers as in Paris, but she voiced my feelings about their dress versus ours exactly.

This is a blog I'll surely drop into from time to time.

Surely, though, there is great literature evolving somewhere in blog land. Does anyone have any recommendations?