Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Updates

New links galore, including poets who don't blog. The Carve website I linked in the wake of Aaron Tieger announcing that his blogging days are over. I don't know why you can't have both, Aaron, but to each his own. Hope I can get the Days and Days chap before you shut it down for good.

My current poem of the week link is actually 3 poems. Yes, they're for the next three weeks. I suggest just scrolling down once a week until March. I'm actually short on poems online and am trying to catch up a bit with new submissions. We'll see how it goes.

The show with Doug went well yesterday, even though I did babble a bit (*gasp*). We just might see excerpts of the interview in a future publication or two. The only thing I'd want clarified from yesterday is the part where I talked about my experience with Bill Knott. While I did focus on some of the more intense aspects of our brief student/teacher relationship, I do have to say he, along with Gail Mazur and John Skoyles, gave me the kick in the nuts I needed to get serious about my work. I particularly owe Knott for being my thesis chair, sight unseen, not reading anything of mine besides the letter I sent him during the summer before I graduated. His intensity is matched only by his generousity.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I certainly could have both. I just don't want to.

Originally I wrote (and posted, for about 5 mintues) a slightly longer post which said a bit more about my reasons for giving up the fishblog. But I took it down lest I sound too bitchy.

In a nutshell, the reasons I started blogging were a) to chronicle my life with my now-long-deceased pet fish Speedy, and b) to meet likeminded poets for hot discourse. The blog outlasted the fish and, I think, its usefullness in the latter capacity. I got tired of not generating any comments (other than the occasional injoke and its unshaven inlaw, the stupid non sequitur) or other discussion. It's the back-and-forth that makes this stuff rewarding for me.

Around the beginning of the year I realized that the primary reasons I was hanging onto the blog were a) to pass on interesting links which most of my readers probably saw on the sites I got them from, and b) because I was afraid people would forget about me if I quit. Realizing what a lameass I was being, I quit.

The blog will remain up for the foreseeable future, however: there's a lot of text there to try and dump, and I can't imagine when I'll have the time and energy to sit down and do that. And besides, there's a lot of interesting stuff up there, and I wouldn't want to deprive the blogosphere of reliving an early Franz Wright Critic Attack. Also, it makes things easier for people to buy my merch (though as soon as I get around to it you'll be able to do that via the CARVE site too).

Speaking of time and energy, that's another reason I quit the blog. Between CARVE, SOON, blogging, work, and life my actual writing (remember writing?) has fallen off dramatically, which is unacceptable.

(I am, however, involved with betatesting a new online poetry community space, which will likely involve some blog-like aspect. Contact me if you're interested).

So there - at length - you have it, Chad. Thanks for asking.

Chad Parenteau said...

I'm definitely up for the community thing. Thanks for offering.

I'll keep a link to your blog, as long as you're keeping it open. That's one of the downers about the internet movement. It's so easy to erradicate the history of whatever movement's going on now (or at the very least all the little facts and tidbits that make it worth keeping up with--though Wright probably wouldn't mind that stuff you refer to being lost). I hope someone is archiving all the stuff worth knowing. All the more reason to get a CD burner and do it myself, I guess.

Rambling Rose Cottage said...

I stumbled upon your blog. Very interesting. Thank you!