After surveying the poetry blogosphere I’ve settled on there being about 5 different types of poetry blogs online today. There are different variations of the 5, but I think we can settle on placing them into 5 categories and I’ll outline those for you with some recommendations on which are the best blogs to read in those categories, with one exception. I won’t recommend any specific blogs in the first category:
- The Vanity Blog – For lack of a better term, I’ll call the first category of poetry blog a “vanity blog”. The reason I call it a vanity blog is because the owner, the poet, simply uses the blog to post their own poems and they are not really much concerned with anything else. Vanity publishing has taken a new face from what it was a few years ago – it’s moved online and exists in two forms (digital and print self-publishing through services like AuthorHouse and Xlibris; and self-publishing through a blog). The second form of vanity publishing is the easiest and least costly. Many of these blogs are run for free because the blogger uses one of the free hosts like Blogger.com or WordPress.com, therefore there are no expenses involved (though I have seen one instance where the poet used Google AdWords to promote his blog and obtain new readers). Simply put, most of the vanity blogs exist solely for the poet’s own vanity. The poems are not that good and the readership is limited. However, there are a few poetry vanity blogs where the poems are not that bad, but I will leave that to your judgement.
- The Marketing Blog – The second type of blog that you’ll find is what I call the marketing blog. These blogs are usually maintained by individual poets, journals and publications, and other poetry organizations. The purpose of these blogs is to promote the works of the poets, events of an organization, or to discuss issues related to a particular journal (such as contests, promotion of the poets published in the journal, deadlines, new issues, etc.). Some of the marketing blogs that I’d recommend are:
- The Poetry Journal Blog – Some blogs act like poetry journals. That is, they have submission guidelines and accept poetry submissions from the general public then they publish the ones they like. Some noteworthy poetry journal blogs include:
- The New Verse News
- I’d love to hear other blogs that are poetry or literary journals
- Poetry News – Another type of poetry blog you’ll find online is the blog that promotes poetry in general and that acts as a news resource for poets, delivering upcoming contests, new poetry journal announcements, etc. Here are a few poetry resource blogs I’d recommend:
- Philosophy Blogs – The last type of poetry blog you’ll find online is what I call a philosophical blog. Its primary purpose is to advance a particular philosophy of poetics or to discuss poetics in general. There aren’t as many of these types of blogs online as I’d like to see, but there are a few, including World Class Poetry Blog, and in addition to WCP I’d recommend these:
I’m sure there are blogs that I’m leaving out in each category. I’d like it if you posted your own favorite blogs in each of these categories. We could add one other category – the Hybrid Blog – but I’m afraid that would be a huge list. The Hybrid Poetry Blog is one that could fall into more than one category above, such as the World Class Poetry Blog, which exists partly to discuss poetics in general and partly to market myself as a poet and my own works, including the sister site World Class Poetry (practically speaking, however, its purpose is primarily philosophical and secondarily marketing). Other blogs, such as Poetic Asides, serve similar functions.
I hope you find additional blogs to read here in this list and while I realize it’s a rather short list of mostly popular blogs that you’re likely already familiar with, I’d hope the benefit is to help us see how we can use blogging as a tool to further the cause of poetry. By categorizing the types of blogs currently online we may form new categories or expand upon the categories we now have. I’d like to see more poetry journals as blogs and more discussions of poetics taking place on blogs. Any takers?
I guess mine would fall into the hybrid category especially since I don’t limit myself to simply poetry. My aim, when I do talk about poetry, is to try and come to an understanding of modern poetics rather than to promote any particular mindset in fact I’m keen to explore areas that are new to me hoping that those with more experience in those fields will chip in and we can all grow a bit.
Jim Murdochs last blog post..The long and the short of it (part one)
Jim, I’d agree that your blog is in a strict sense a hybrid. Any published author that has a blog naturally can have their blog classified as a marketing tool whether they use it as a blatant marketing tool or not. It’s always at least an indirect marketing tool. But sticking to the five primary categories, I’d say your blog fits into the philosophical category because you are concerned with larger questions of literary merit. You are not simply promoting yourself and while you also discuss fiction and writing in a general sense, rather than just poetry, your focus seems to be on the philosophy of literature, which I like quite a lot.
I am a proud owner of what you strangely call a ‘vanity blog’ where I post my poems and share them with my friends, some of whom seem to quite like them. Have you ever heard of the term, ‘independant publishing’. It’s like independant film and independant msuic. I’ll think you’ll find it a much more up to date term for what I am doing than ‘vanity’ publishing. A term which contains such obvious and old fashioned perjorative resonance. My goodness, look at all those adverts in your sidebar for your social networking, you must be an important person.
Paul Squiress last blog post..No More Blogging For Me.
A poetry blog, a journal, that I submit to is Bluepepper. I find it a very good one, even if it accepts my work.
http://www.bluepepper.blogspot.com/
And submit, if you can….
An interesting way to parse blogs.
Inasmuch as *all* blogs are, by definition, vanity blogs (including yours and mine), I would nevertheless agree with you. There are some über-Vanity blogs. However, I don’t know what using a “free host” has to do with anything. Some perfectly disastrous blogs are “full fee” pay-per-post productions while some extremely deserving blogs are “free host” blogs. (I suppose you were trying to extend the vanity press analogy – but it’s a red-herring.)
Many bloggers would probably opt to build their blogs from scratch, but just don’t have time to lavish on HTML code or CSS. I’m one of them. Maybe when my kids aren’t 5 and 8 years old…
Patrick Gillespies last blog post..Dec 21 2008 – deer hunting
What is more vain? Giving my poetry away in my blog or hiding it away because it might be worth something one day? I tire quickly of those who pontificate about poetry but don’t post the poetry to prove they know what they are talking about.