Back again...Hello!!

In October last year, I said goodbye to this blog, saying I would transfer its functions to my website. But, because of formatting defaults on that website that I didn't like and couldn't easily change, I've decided to reopen this blog.  On my website's blog I'll announce news -- upcoming shows and the like -- but here I'll quote poems, write opinion pieces, etc.  I've moved some postings here from that blog... anything dating from last Oct., in fact.

So here I am, again! Adieu becomes au devoir.  Tangled in the woodwork, coming out of it, as always!

Back

Clearly I've been away from this blog for a while, carrying a full teaching load, and little inclined to put much of my flagging energy here. But I never expected to have that Thomas Lovell Beddoes poem to head of this blog so long -- as if in its macabre prolixity it's emblematic of this blog itself, or even my current state.


Although the teaching has been going well, I do admit to a certain malaise, poetry-wise and creativity-wise. On lengthy commutes I've been listening to podcasts of Ideas, Philosophy Bites, Entitled Opinions, and TED Talks, Tapestry, The Sunday Edition and occasionally Poetry Magazine, while keeping informed about the wave of revolution in North Africa and other parts through The Current, and when I get home, Huffington Post and Al Jazeera. Spare hours finds me honing my guitar playing, learning pieces like Hotel California, Fix You and Wonderful Tonight to share with my class of EOL Adult learners. But lately I've drafted a new poem and done some good revisions, and -- what is the connection? -- find myself once again inclined to post here. So, as they say, stay tuned.

80,000

My site meter tells me this blog has just surpassed 80,000 "unique" visits since shortly after it was begun in Sept. 2004.  That was a google search from Buxton, Maine for Li-Young Lee.  Rough estimates:  this blog has gotten about 13,300 visits a year or 1,100 a month or 37 a day over 6 years. Very shortly I'll surpass a thousand posts.  This one is #992.

Breaking the silence

Has my blog been quiet lately, or what? Last month, without really planning to, I took a break that quite frankly, began to look definitive. And this, National Poetry Month, no less -- both here and south of the border.

Work of late, freelance deadlines, tax deadlines, & personal stuff don't begin to account for my flagging interest. True, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter, have siphoned off much audience and responsiveness... a phenonomenon that has been remarked upon by far more active and popular bloggers than moi-meme.  This blog, like many others, has gotten quiet. Look at all the goose eggs after postings below. Attention here, as everywhere, as been fragmented, diluted, dissolved by the sheer excess.

For a long time -- five years or so -- I've posted and crossposted for the love of it, to contribute in some humble way to the store of knowledge and reflection, the availability of certain poems and poets.  I've enjoyed the immediacy of layout, publication, and feedback -- the chance to hone critical skills, to write some things that evolved into articles elsewhere and even poems, to make some key social connections. It's been a good run.

But underlying the present ennui is a resentment:  why should the Great Pharoah Google reap all the profits (and those profits are indeed gargantuan) while we cyberslaves toil to build their palaces and pyramids? Now that they're scanning & photographing everything under the sun and even much of what's beyond it, I'm inclined to tell them to go fuck themselves.  And shove this humble contribution up their ass.  As for me, I'll go off and read books in print, write books in print, write my diaries in private (where I can vent without the shit hitting the fan), and cultivate real friendships with people whom I can speak to and touch.

With that, I press DELETE! 

Out, out, brief (electronic) candle! 

Such fun, rhetoric. 

For all that, I can still see that this blog will have its uses.  I've enjoyed writing this, for instance.  I've got a review coming up in the Rover:  some poems I don't have room for there, I'll post here. I've got a few good posts in hand.  Even as I feed the monster, I still find pleasure in sharing with whomever, whenever, through this medium. Yes, the slavemaster is gentle, if inexorable.  

Seems this blog is among this site's "30 awesome poetry blogs you're not reading yet". I can think of a number of other blogs at least as deserving -- check my sidebar -- but it's nice to get a pat on the back.

What to do with Woodwork?

Have been thinking about making this a "Tuesday only" blog -- as lately, I've been posting only about once a week or even ten days.

My own experimentation with Facebook and Twitter has lead to a lack of focus on my part -- plus lately, I'm just not willing to spend as much time looking at a computer screen. Due those competing platforms readers have been drifting away from blogosphere. Frankly, it's crossed my mind to drop this blog altogether. But I do enjoy this form of instant publication -- far more than the others, I may add.

I've recently discovered that in a jiffy one can crosspost interesting articles in "Huffington Post" and other online papers that I regularly read. On Blogger, though, unlike Facebook, there's no quick and obvious way to post thumbnail images, an obvious attraction for the eye. I hope that changes. I like a varied blog, so for now, while still posting my own things when the mood strikes, I'll pepper things up that way. Forays into politics, therefore, may become more than occasional. These are politically charged times.

Plug for Woodwork

I've just learned Online University Reviews lists Woodwork as one of the top 100 poetry blogs. But they've overlooked a number of other worthies, including (hyperlinked on my blogroll, to the right) Robert Archambeau's Samisdat Blog, Sina Queyras' Lemon Hound, Rob McLennon's blog, Seth Abramson's Suburban Ecstasies, Pris Campbell's Songs to a Midnight Sky, Todd Swift's Eyewear, and Mary Biddinger's Wordcage, to name a few. Meanwhile, they've listed CD Young's Avoiding the Muse twice. Other things on their list, like the Slate Poetry Podcast, aren't properly blogs at all. Maybe if they paid more attention to their own editing, they would also pay a little more attention to what's out there. But, it's nice to be listed.

Some of you may have noticed the new gadget on my sidebar: Yes indeed, hate to say, in the last day or so I've become a twit -- or, less self-deprecatingly, a

... or rather, tweeter. I'm a relatively late adopter of this -- scare quotes, anyone? -- "communications" "tool" -- but a number of people have asked me to become a "friend", so I decided to try it out to see what the "fuss" is all about. This business of "friends" is of course, quite ridiculous -- a true "friend" of mine once told me that after he opened such an account (well, it was actually a Facebook account, but same diff.), he soon had more "friends" than ever before, and never felt so lonely in his life. And frankly, up to now I just haven't had the stomach to learn yet another computer app.

The limitation -- 140 words -- is obvious. And the question too, the stuff of idiocy: What are you doing? Frankly, what I'm thinking is practically always a lot more interesting that what I'm doing. That's why I'm sitting at a computer. Of course, most of us so-called tweeters soon ignore that opening gambit and jot opinions, links, etc. (I did it from the very start.)

Call it Blogging Extra-lite. Nanoblogging. Net telegraph. (Actually, the official term is micro-blogging.) The appeal: well, it's not so wordy as all this goddamned blogging. At140 words, including hyperlinks, style -- or use of lengthy words, or even extraneous parentheses -- are quickly defenestrated. Yr as good as anyone els: 4 concision's sake, U soon start using sh frms. 2 spk., which is v. good for egalitsm.

The other thing, though, is that it's POPULAR. In two minutes, after announcing my recent review, a certain social connector who posts about ten times a day sent a big waoooh! and the word on to about 125 people. This blog, on the other hand, has become rather a quiet place. Does the sudden rise of twitter have anything to do with it?

Other indicators suggest that twittering is a passing fad that may soon be abandoned by all but a few stalwarts. (Like blogging, actually.) According a study referenced by this site, already more than half of all twitter accounts are inactive -- that is, haven't posted an update for at least week, and only 5% of tweeters account for 75% of tweets.

Maybe, though, with skillful use of tweets I can drag some twits -- err tweeters -- into this bog, rather blog. We'll see.

Wayside Poet Bloggers

Going through my blogroll -- my "Other Worthies" list down at the bottom of my right-hand gutter, many of which I hadn't clicked on since 2006 -- I found a number of poet bloggers who I used to link with quite actively have either cut or dimmed their lights. AJP Liszkiewicz, Ana Bozevic Bowling, Chris Lott, Dallas Marina, Erin Noteboom, Estaban Arrellano, Julie Carter*, and Gail Armstrong are among those who have all closed up shop or lie dormant. Jim Behrle, whose ongoing lampoon of American Pobiz reached splendid comedic highs, now -- is this deadpan joke, or accident? -- redirects us to some sacchrine commercial venture called americanpoetry.biz... Once central stations, poet bloggers who engaged us with a lot of flair, are now neglected way-stations: Nick Carbo, AD Thomas, Anthony Robinson.

Of course, all fun things pass. Has the poetic blogosphere become too crowded? Has the novelty worn off? Have the rigours of cyberslavery worn writers down? Clearly, all or any of the above. While the likes of George Murray, Zach Wells and Collin Kelley continue to blog vivaciously and Silliman ad-infinitum, I sense a growing ennui in po-blogosphere.

Gail Armstrong, in signing off for good, expresses a common sentiment:

I don’t suppose it even needs to be pointed out that my enthusiasm for this weblogging business has near fully waned.

We’ve had a good run but it’s no longer fun. Or useful. And I admit to a certain – perhaps misguided and no doubt ludicrously precocious – nostalgia for a once more intimate web, one with less of a noisy strip joint about it.

Gone, it seems, are those heady early days of freewheeling poetical discourse and debate. Gone the sense of discovery, of breaking frontiers in a new kind of community-building. So why do I keep this blog up? Well, I have a new book coming out that's exciting to post about. (Out of the woodwork, indeed.) I still enjoy the physical act of putting things up -- images, poems, the occasional mini-review. Writing here hones skills, keeps a vital (if diminishing -- let's say, flickering) sense of connection. Occasionally, real connections are made, and I still learn from others here. So I blog...

*I've since learned she blogs from this address. I also learned that her husband just died. I am deeply sorry.

New look a-comin'

Did some major blog overhaul this weekend. My literary links list, which has grown quite massive, I've moved to my website's link page -- easier to scroll down and see. That took two or three hours. The reason is that I want to change the look of my blog -- I've just gotten very tired of looking at standard Black Minima. When I tried to customize/update using Blogger's new program, though, even though they assured me my links lists would be preserved, categories were lost or blended together and it was an absolute mess to sort out. So I reverted back to the old design. (I'm glad they gave me the option to do that.) The solution: simplify the links list.

In the next few days, this place will have a new look. When I look at the other standard templates Blogger offers, though, most are quite clunky. None, frankly, is as nifty to my eyes as Black Minima. But Blogger has YouTube videos showing us how we customize blogs to our own specifications.

The people at Vallum in their blog have named this site blog of the week. Shameless plug for me, they say, since they're printing me, but then, who ever heard of a shameful plug? Unless it's your bathtub stopper that just keeps on leaking no matter how much you fiddle with it...

A couple of new bloggers for my blogroll: fellow Montrealer Stephen Morrissey, and one Indran Amirthanayagam, a Vancouver-based Ceylonese (Sri-Lancan)-born poet-diplomat who writes his posts in flawless English, Spanish, French, and who writes poetry in all three languages. I just read an excellent post of his reflecting on Latin American poetry, and international influences in general.

Epiphany of Epiphanies

Today, I had an aha moment. An epiphany. All at once, these Four Supreme Precepts, these Four Mighty Pillars of Civility and Wisdom came to me in a blinding vision:

• Be polite
• Assume good faith
• No personal attacks
• Be welcoming

Where did I find these? In the Lotus Sutra? The Tao Te Ching? The Analects of Confucius? The writings of Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, or any of that ever-expanding host of New (and Improved)-Age Sages? In the profoundest recesses my own marvelously sensitive, poetic ticker?

No -- in the ground rules for Wikipedia's discussion board.

May they be ground rules for this blog...particularly, the comments boxes.

You out there know who you are.

50,000

The poem that was posted here is now GONE. Maybe it will be reposted when it's published. Some reviews consider posting a poem here publication. It's a literary gag order, if you ask me. Anyway, thanks for the feedback, you guys -- it lead to a couple of revisions.

3

I just realized that the third anniversary of this blog just passed last Friday. Actually, Out of the Woodwork first came to being on Blog City back in May, 2004 -- but I soon found there were more advantages with Blogger, so I moved here. And 521 posts and 45,007 visits later, I'm still here. It's been a great educational experience, an excellent place to contact poets, make friends (of the virtual sort), and further develop my views on poetry, the arts -- and life. Thanks to all you who visit and leave comments. This blog shows no signs of abating yet!

Added to the blogroll/Naomi Klein

I just added Joshua Robbin's blog to my frequently-read blogger's list. Found it yesterday in a roundabout way: by googling the Strand's poem, The Great Poet Returns, featured below: his was the only site that had it. Then I got captivated by his content.

One of Joshua's recent posts is on Naomi Klein's latest opus, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. He's assembled an excellent cluster of quotes, links, even a You Tube video on this must-read polemic. For sure, I'll be dropping in on his blog quite often...

Also, added to my list of Fun sites is The Phrontistery, a compendium of rare, mostly multi-syllabic words, and Blogger Play, a never-ending slide show of images recently posted on Blogger. Blogger Play makes for a mesmerizing alternative "desktop" -- some mind-blowing juxtapositions (if you let your mind be blown), and some breathtaking photos (if you let your breath be taken) -- until the awareness of the sheer numbers of people constantly posting starts to feel wearisome.

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.

Fun Sites

Another plan I have is 'World Peace through Formal Introductions.' The idea is that everyone in the world would be required to meet everyone else in the world, formally, at least once. You'd have to look the person in the eye, shake hands, repeat their name, and try to remember one outstanding physical characteristic. My theory is, if you knew everyone in the world personally, you'd be less inclined to fight them in a war: "Who??? The Malaysians??? Are you kidding??? I know those people!!!

-- George Carlin

I was reminded of this quote when I looked and listened today through 6 Billion Others, a site featuring hundreds of people from all over the world talking about their experiences of such universal things as Love, Family, Dreams, Fears, Nature, God, etc. Very touching, very revealing. The clips are often too short for the interviewees to say all that much, but their faces -- captured beautifully in an intimate, high-res lens -- speak lifetimes. Thanks, Pris, for pointing this one out.

Kittenwar as I've said before, is perhaps my favourite site to go to escape the real wars we humans create. Vote for the cutest kitten. Contrary to their own policy, the site managers allow too many readers to enter pictures of their adult cats into the competition: this diminishes the cuteness factor considerably. But if you want to experience an all out cuteness attack, check out the winningest kittens.

A Softer World is an internet comic featuring little monologues (or dialogues) over photographs. Deadpan, acerbic, oddly cryptic -- but often strangely poetic and surreal.

The Daily Show site features video outcuts from some of Jon Stewart's most cutting introductory sequences -- as well as from the most recent week's programming. If you don't have time to watch this brilliant show, this is a good place to catch what you missed.

Links to all these sites are now listed under FUN on my sidebar, beneath the poetry-related sites and above the literary reviews.

Past the post

Robert just wrote a wonderful post on "The Poet as Specialist". Well worth reading.

My previous post, by the way, was my 500th since joining blogspot nearly three years ago.