Great P & W Issues Is Out

 For untold years I have looked to Poets and Writers Magazine as a central source of poetry/writing-related craft information. 

The most recent has an excellent section on inspiration with lots of great suggestions. It also has the annual debut poets' article that examines some of this year's breakout poets with new books. 

I recommend P&W in general, but this issue is great. 

Thrall Is on My Radar and List Of Books to Read.

There is a fascinating article in the Sept/Oct issue of Poets and Writers about Natasha Tretheway by Kevin Nance. I read this article while riding in the care yesterday - something I generally find distracting and often ultimately will quit in frustration and pick up again later. Not this time.

I think what I find so inciting about Tretheway and in simultaneously this article was the depth of authenticity. As a writer Tretheway peels back the onion skin layer after layer until the stark truth resides in her own words. I am quite anxious to read her latest book of poems titled Thrall and described as ambitious.

Tretheway acknowledges it as ambitious but with as price. How many of us as writers are ready and willing to bare discomfort that such honesty exposes? I see it as the hallmark of exceptional writing; and the hurdle that every write struggles to get over. Some never, Tretheway certainly has.

Stop Blogging?

I suppose I owe a credit here to Robert Peake, so Let me get it out of the way before I go further into this. I will do so for three reasons.

1. It was after reading his post Blogging, Reincarnated that I was lead to Paul Boutin's Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004
2. By my citation of Peake's blog I am actually acknowledging that I read someone else's blog, thus affirming the relevance of such a practice to me.
3. While I have no way of knowing if this is the case, Robert may actually achieve some boost to his ego by my mentioning his blog. In any event, doing so is harmless.

It is true what Boutin writes about how blogging has evolved into something that become an industry. It is also true that most bloggers will never have the draw of a Daily Kos, The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan or Wired Blogs.

When I started blogging this blog, (though there was one earlier) in September of 2003 I had no delusion, no expectation that my blog would be read daily by tens of thousands of people. I am not now looking down the long barrel of disappointment and feeling threatened by any of the big name bloggers. Suggesting that if I quit now I would be in good company because Jason Calacanis who made millions blogging gave it up is insignificant to me. Perhaps if I made millions at anything I might give it up to tend to dealing with my financial portfolio in these turbulent times but I'll cross that bridge when it becomes a problem.

Blogging going mainstream is in fact a tribute to its success. Oh I know, success can be too much of a good thing. Boutin suggests that Twitter, Flicker and Facebook make blogs look so, 2004ish.  Many people have taken social networking to these levels and maintained blogs at the same time. And yes many of the big name blogs have become impersonal.  That is not necessarily true of the countless other bloggers who are not commercialized.

The niche of writer and or poet bloggers fills a large void that has become a part of the changing social fabric in our culture.  In recent years we've seen dozens of publication of the correspondence between peers - the likes of Robert Lowell, James Wright, Helen Bishop, Ted Hughes, Anne Sexton, etc. In the days when U.S. Mail was full of folksy letters and banter between people, writers had a chance to openly express themselves on a more intimate level with other writers. The present day writers has lost that touch. It is not necessary for me to feel I am being read by thousands upon thousands of other writer/poets. There is however a benefit in that smaller networking, from sharing trials and tribulations, rejections, successes, writers blocks and new ideas with a few others and at the same time listening to them as well. 

Twitter has caused a good deal of interest among some people. I could argue however that it is just taking mass instant messaging to another level and instant messaging is so 1990ish.  I have a facebook. I broke down and did one, but largely because of the messages from the countless literary journals that have a presence there and a few people who (coughing here) actually have blogs. It is a connecting source but hardly the same as blogging.

Boutin may actually be able to persuade some people to stop blogging. But if he is successful in making his point that blogging is really so passé he could wake up one morning and find that no one is reading Wired's Blog. But that would give his argument a whole lot of credit.

 

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Poetry,Writing,Wired,Robert Peake,Paul Boutin

The power of words against oppression.

It's always amazing to me the lengths many under oppression will go to by contrast to the relative apathetic nature of many in America. (see A war on words)

When Burmese officials use military force to crack down on pro-democracy advocates, it is the military against words. The opposition to oppression in Burma has little to offer but the burning desire to be free and the courage not to be silenced. Journalists and poets as well as the monks in rebellion against the government have been the target of officials who fear them to the point of imprisonment. These will be the historians of Burma. The officials do have cause to fear their words because they tell the story of oppression - a history the government can only change by changing itself.

Interesting

At different points in his life, Wolf has had episodes of hypergraphia, a compulsion to write that takes hold for hours, days, or even weeks at a time. Heartbreakingly Poetic Prose

Richard Wilbur on the Poet's Audience

"It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self. ... To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men." ~ Richard Wilbur

Ground Clutter

Rain and thunder rolled in this morning. A cold chill hangs in the air. It is quiet here, I've already taken the car in for routine maintenance bright and early this morning and back home already. So starts the weekend.

While in the waiting room at the dealership, I let my mind take hold of my pen and scratched out some stuff in my journal. Nothing spectacular came of it.

I kept thinking of things going on around the world this week:

• I thought of Vice President Cheney and I had to ask myself what drives this man to to be so caustic and discordant? His remarks aimed at both China and Iran are not helpful to constructive dialogue.
• I'm wondered what was going through the heads of the Jurors in the I. "Scooter" Libby trial?
• I envisioned the rats running around the NYC Taco Bell. "Which way to the boarder?"
• And the building at Walter Reed Army Hospital with U.S. soldiers who returned home from war facing struggles with psychological issues and housed in deplorable conditions and primarily caring for themselves.

You may think I have too much time on my hands. Perhaps, but in the quiet of a Saturday morning this poet is finding it hard to clear his head of ground clutter.

Poetry magazine creates unity through line breaks - Culture

Poetry magazine creates unity through line breaks - Culture

Interesting piece on Women Celebrating Poetry