Recurring Poetry
Tuesday 24 March, 2009 I'm not sure what to call them - blog poems is totally wrong, serial poems is used often but seems inaccurate. Recurring poetry is the least imposing term I can think of. Basically it's sequences of poems being posted on blogs. I can think of a few that I'm enjoying right now:
There are other examples as well. I'm not proposing this as a new category of poetry or anything like that, it's just gratifying to see such a high quality of work so readily published and so easily accessed. One thing that does perturb me is that because these poems are interspersed among other blog posts on the poets' websites, they don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve, when they're easily better than half the stuff I've read in print recently. Don't let the casualness of the posting fool you, this is good stuff.
Reader Comments (13)
but what if the other blog posts are part of the poem? My worry is that some of these poems will find their way into books, and the unique form in which they have been posted - the commons interspersed with a few pages from the Baudelaire notes, interspersed with the declaration 'burn the banks' - will be lost when set between two covers.
You're right Albert, it was narrow-minded of me not to consider that, especially with my current thoughts regarding other poetry. Good point. - Alex
This made me think. Too many editors will not take work that has been published on a blog. Hate this feeling of ownership some folks have. Makes me think, for a future past simple, maybe, instead of asking for work as a doc or rtf, I will ask for a link to the work on the web. If it is not already published on your blog, I won't consider it. Try to find a way to bring more attention to these poems, but then maybe that would be missing the point.
No I don't think it would be missing the point at all. In fact, Jow Lindsay on his blog last week in a rather flippant, but as per usual, spot on way assembled a magazine of links which was a composite of past simple, black box manifold, and onedit. For one, I think the idea of only considering work if it is already on a blog is an interesting and forward thinking way of working with the form of the internet, which, through its various economies is undoubtedly changing poetry on a semantic as well as formal level. On your point that many editors will not accept work if it has already been published on a blog - well this does not surprise me. As you point out this has much to do with ideas of ownership and perhaps some belief that if the poetry has been distributed electronically it might sell less than a printed publication containing original work. This in my opinion, is a misguided view. The primary reason this view is misguided is that, when a work is printed its meaning, and the experience the reader has of the work, fundamentally changes.
Perhaps I press the point too far but I have a rather different reading experience when I read a Sean Bonney work which has been posted on his blog, published by Salt, Yt, or Barque. Editors and publishers should think more what is best for the poetry not what is best for their ego or their pockets. Why shouldn't one poem be reprinted in a variety of contexts if that is what the poem deserves or needs. Different publications have different readerships right? Anyway, I agree with you Jim, that is what I am saying.
steve
Jow should be expecting a call from my lawyer soon.
"Your ass is grass Jim's lawyer, & thy dags /
th'ladybugs fat pon the grass's heads, /
Jim's lawyer, you fucking"*click* is how it went down.
But parasitic link zines could be done more seriously, or at least more *adamantly* than ON PAST SIMPLE BLACK WHATEVER. No having to deal with authors, who are pricks. Assemble ensemble, add penetrating and timely editorial, & w/ a freer hand in both aspects, since you don't have to faintly factor in the expectations you've aroused in the poets who have agreed to let you use their work. The editorial could run, "I hate these shitty poems and the cunts who wrote them yet magnanimously I bid them to my forums for the next few pointlessly observable episodes of their egos." Or it could talk about last Wednesday, you know?
But I like also Jim's idea of asking for link submissions, cuz obv editors don't just disseminate & curate, they shape uh *ouevres* by periodically giving writers an appetite for some kind of selection / consolidation / polack.
The editorial could run, "I hate these shitty links and the credulous cunts who." What those links point to could *change* too. ALSO what about feeds? & ALSO what about nested or mutually-publishing zines, e.g. A is B's editorial & B is A's? & poems which curate / publish poems? it begins to get very wanky doesn't it!!!
JOHN SPARROW if y're out there I still intend one day to write with you the one POEM FOR EVERY OCCASION.
But I like *also* my idea of asking myself for submissions to my notebook only I will ever read, and then rejecting what I submit or breaking all contact with myself despite several follow-up queries.
You can resist the writer/editor plus editor/publisher productive unit of ouevres. Ages ago I asked Lanny Quarles to submit something for Bad Press & he was like "oh take anything off my blog, anything I post to the list [Wryting]". Alan Sondheim's pretty much the same I think.
Editors are the legislative concession mechs of patriarchy. We're the front line of recuperation. We're scum, like pyschiatrists, or direct democracy facilitators.
Jow: Think of the money we will make! A poem machine! No more of this "inspiration" or "here's an idea" bullshit. Just click-and there we go.
Uh-oh, this just became yo mama's chatroom.
"& ALSO what about nested or mutually-publishing zines, e.g. A is B’s editorial & B is A’s? & poems which curate / publish poems? it begins to get very wanky doesn’t it!!!"
so jow,
I heard talk on the grape vine of a new London reading series that might be set up where poets were only allowed to read another poet's work, which strikes me as interesting because it allows for a nested reading structure within the night itself, a type of 'recurring' poem which takes the form and context of the poetry reading as its conceptual and semantic focus. Imagine this (and lets use names):
1st reading) Sean Bonney reads the work of Jim Goar,
2nd reading) Harry Godwin reads some Baudelaire (french original)
3rd reading) Jim Goar then reads some of Harry Godwin's poems, poems that were first published on Sophie Robinson's blog, The Daily Filth, poems written in response to Jim's own poems that Jim had read at Openned at a previous night.
4th Reading) Sophie Robinson then reads some of Bonney's 'Baudelaire In English',
5th reading) Harry Godwin reads some of Sophie's Sonnets in the Jeff Hilson Sonnet anthology.
6th reading) Hilson opens the Sonnet anthology and reads a poem at random from the book.
For the next night, we find the poet that Hilson picked out of the anthology, and make them read Hilson's work at the next night. Or construct a poet puppet that can mime a Hilson poem, if the poet that Hilson happened to choose was dead and stuff. Or as an alternative Prynne could read a Cobbing poem and so on.
So yes it can get really wanky very quickly, but some interesting social / aesthetic connections and inter-textual matrixes could be created over the course of the night. event as more than getting people into a room.
Steve.
Shamefully forgot to mention http://canarywoof.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">Jeff Hilson and http://scorecard.typepad.com/crag_hills_poetry_score/" rel="nofollow">Crg Hill are doing similar things ditto http://twitter.com/soundpoet" rel="nofollow">Matt Dalby on Twitter. There are others.
- Alex
Can we dig up Edgar Allan Poe and get him to read some Tim Wells?
lets action that.
steve