Returning?
October 22, 2005
I’ve been away from poetry blogland for quite some time: partly due to a really heavy travel schedule but also because I had grown weary of the whole scene.
If I read, I write. It’s not in my nature– nor is it very fulfilling– to lurk. But I have to ask myself what I am getting out of the experience. Very occasionally I discover a new writer or some new work that I really enjoy. Even less often there will be discussions about writers and work that I already enjoy.
Most of the time I just feel like the lone standard bearer for a whole group of poetry and poets that are casually dismissed. I’m invited to try to get into the Post Avant, but most of them have (apparently) already read all of those in the “SOQ” and written them off as– at best– also-rans in a race long since over.
Poetry blogs are a territory that has pretty much been claimed by those of a particular aesthetic that I only partially share. The others like me appear to be content with the traditional publishing devices (web-based and not) and mailing lists. And maybe I should be too. It’s not as if there is some lack of work to be engaged with or writing to do, and while I don’t feel fulfilled by that online community and its strange reticence, I’ve never felt fulfilled by the local community either… which is what drove me to the web in the first place!
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Poetry and Poetics, Psyche, Site News
All me-stream all the time.
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October 23rd, 2005 at 8:02 am
Glad to see you back. Maybe it’s time for post quietude, not soq or post avant.
October 24th, 2005 at 11:09 am
You’ve been struggling with similar issues all year, it seems. If you’re game I’ll see you to a haiku-a-day, or some other form. I’ve been playing with 25 words or less prose with some entertaining results; five lines of five words. Just don’t let yourself get bogged down so much thinking about writing, the whys and the wherefors; just spend a little time each day writing.
(Yeah, like you haven’t heard *that* before…)
rl
October 24th, 2005 at 11:42 am
Thanks… I’m actually not having any problem writing. I’m just trying to decide what I want to do with– and what the value is– of this blog. I’ve discovered some new writers and some online friends, but I’m not sure if it has been worth the cost in terms of effort and my psyche
I’d like to think I’m in the first wave of many people who are in the same aesthetic group as I, but I’m beginning to think that’s not the case, and that the others aren’t going to be showing up anytime soon…
October 26th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Chris I would love to read some of your own favourite poems. I live in the Antipodes, the far ends of the earth, New Zealand and I don’t think your work is available here. It would be nice if you could open a section in your blog devoted to Poems of Chris. It would give us an opportunity to see your aesthetic in practice (praxis). please see what you can do. Many thanks,
Ron.
January 21st, 2006 at 11:22 am
just thought i’d drop you a line and say i really like your blog. i’ll be linking you. cheers, lee.