World Class Poetry Blog

Millennial Poetics: Adding
The Tenth Column
29 April 2008, the poet @ 9:58 pm

It’s time to review the Millennial Poetics philosophy once more simply because I’ve thought of another principle that should be added. It’s the 10th, but I’d prefer to call them columns.

There’s a reason I want to call them columns. In architecture, a column has a specific purpose; really, it is a dual purpose. On the one hand, they are decorative. On the other hand, they offer support to a building’s roof. But the distance between the foundation and the roof can depend on the length of the column, the style of architecture, and various other factors. In certain historic cultures, a column could also bear a certain mythological significance. It could serve as an archetype as much as anything else. I think when you are building a magnificent structure for which there is no duplicate you must consider its structural support, its design, and its cultural (or mythological) significance. Such is the case with Millennial Poetics.

To review, the previous 9 pillars, or columns, of this school of poetics are:

1. Craft is of utmost importance
2. There is no room for prejudice
3. Form is just another element of craft
4. Creativity and craft go hand in hand
5. No topic is taboo
6. There is no such thing as language that is too archaic
7. All poems are individuals
8. There is no acceptable method to writing poetry
9. All convention should be shunned

I won’t elaborate on them here. You can read about each column, previously referred to as principles, by revisiting my blog series on that subject here. What I’d like to do now is discuss the 10th column, which is, namely: Technology may be used to enhance the poetry experience.

Technology May Be Used To Enhance
The Poetry Experience
With A Brief History Of The Internet
New technologies always advance old art forms. Gutenberg’s press took the art of writing in all media to a new level of mass communication. The advent of the computer allowed artists and writers, creators of all sorts, a new kind of ability. The personal computer made accessible to the average man and woman what before was available to only those who could afford a computer. The PC was affordable to all.

The Internet is really not that new. It’s been around for a half century, but was very primitive in its natural, or original, state, and was only available to researchers and military personnel. In fact, the ARPANET was created specifically to allow researchers the ability to communicate with each other in ways that before were unheard of. For nearly 40 years, the ARPA community grew into a vast network of researchers, government agencies, and military personnel, who were able to share information across long distances without having to use unsecure phone lines or pay large amounts of money on communication systems.

People have been able to communicate by e-mail by as early as 1971. FTP, File Transfer Protocol, has been available since 1973. In the 1970s, the ARPANET flourished and communications between computers across long distances became even more prevalent. In order to participate in the network, a station had to have a node, a special way to connect to the Net. Otherwise, access was not possible. In 1983, the U.S. military took part of that ARPANET and created the MILNET.

Also during this time, several independent networks developed that allowed their users to communicate with each, but they were more limited than the ARPANET or MILNET. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to connect these networks and that led to the development of The Internet in the 1980s. When commercial interests began to find applications for this new mode of information delivery, widespread use picked up speed and by the mid-1990s, almost everyone in the U.S. had heard of the the Internet and many of them were connected at least by e-mail.

What’s Poetry Got To Do With It?
So what does any of this have to do with poetry? Well, we’re talking about new media, correct? Specifically, this discussion is of the Internet and Internet-delivery systems. There is technology available to the average man and woman today that was not available even 10 years ago. I remember when Yahoo! was a simple directory. In 1995, you could go online and search Yahoo! for poetry websites. There were a ton of them.

It was around that time when serious-minded businessmen started figuring out ways to market themselves online. By the time Google got its start in the late 1990s, there were people making serious money online. And they had no idea about search engine optimization back then.

Since that time, new technologies like Flash, web-delivered video, podcasts, and e-books have emerged. These are all great delivery systems for poetry and all have been used to a degree of success by online poets. We have yet to tap into their full potential. I believe the future looks bright for poetry online and new technologies that have not yet been imagined can take poetry into unheard of directions. Already, online poets are experimenting with hypertext poems, Flash video poetry, and poetry radio through podcasts. Some of these are very creative endeavors.

Poets in the 21st century have available to them resources that the majority of humanity prior to 1950 would never have imagined. If Gutenberg could see what we are tinkering with today he’d go ape over it. Many great thinkers of the past could have extended their influence way beyond what they were capable of if they’d had access to these same tools. Poets today are blessed. I see further specialization and nichefication among poets occurring as a result of technology. That’s not a bad thing. It means that poetry is on the rise and new media means new modes of delivery. It also means new ways to be creative. Technology and poetry go hand in hand; the question is, How will we make the best use of them?

Listen to poetry from your browser, read your favorite poetry blogs without subscribing, with this grand new technology

MiPOradio And Video Poetry: Download The WCP Toolbar
15 March 2008, the poet @ 6:23 pm

If you’re a fan of MiPOradio then you might be interested to know that you can now listen to every broadcast from your browser. All you need to do is download the World Class Poetry toolbar. Our radio feature includes 30 radio stations, including NPR, and broadcasts from Grace Cavalieri’s MiPOradio. You’ll absolutely be able to love listening to it directly from your browser - and the best part is, it’s free.

Download the toolbar now by clicking on the banner below:

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Weekly Poetry Videos Courtesy Of George Wallace
If you’ve been reading World Class Poetry Blog for some time then you know that I am a big supporter of poetry videos. I recently discovered a poetry website dedicated completely to this new medium. It’s Poetryvlog.com.This week’s video is from David Amram, a world class musician and renaissance man. Amram is on video reading his own poetry and if you’re from the beat generation then you’d be interested to know that he rubbed elbows with some of the greats from that era, including Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, and Dizzy Gillespie.

Every video features a poet reading his or her own poems, and you can catch it weekly. There is even an RSS feed, which means you can subscribe so that you don’t miss any videos. And there is quite a list of poets already archived in video at Poetryvlog.com.

Of course, I’ll make it easy for you. Stay up to date with poetry videos by downloading the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

Now you have two reasons to get the toolbar - and, remember, it’s free.

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Audio Contest, AWP, And The State Of Poetry Today
6 February 2008, the poet @ 11:49 pm

The Missouri Review hosted an audio contest. The winners of the poetry competition were announced:

First place in subcategory and Editors’ Choice Award, $100: Todd Boss, “To Wind a Mechanical Toy”
First runner up: Todd Boss, “Yellow Rocket”
Second runner-up: Runner up: Susan B.A. Sommers-Willett, “The Golden Lesson”
Third runner-up: Eric Torgenson, “Taking Tickets”
Fourth runner-up: Josh McDonald, “Women in Strange Trousers”

Chekhov’s Mistress Lives It Up Big
Bud Parr is salivating. It’s AWP week and Andrew Sullivan threw him some link love, which led to a pack of ants strolling through his picnic.

I’ve got to say, I’m not all that big on conferences and group activities. It sounds as though Bud is much the same way:

I’ve been to a lot of conventions and most of them are sickening to one degree or another, but there was a certain harmony of purpose at AWP and despite one table of dour interns (from a publisher we know) everyone was pretty enthusiastic about what they were doing.

So from the sound of things, AWP must be a blast. Sorry I’m missing it.

Interesting Quote Of The Day
This is an interesting quote:

“A new, non-corporate internationalism is emerging in literature, an independent web of associations and alliances at whose centre, like a brooding spider, lurks 3:AM. This collection is essential reading.” - Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder

Ron Silliman’s Brilliance
Ron Silliman and I are on the same page. He received a questionnaire from the Poetry Foundation and publishes his answers on his blog. Tidbits:

There are presently at least 10,000 publishing English-language poets. There may in fact be twice that number – it really depends on what percentage of publishing poets you think have active weblogs dedicated to the subject (if it’s ten percent, then the number is 10,000, but if you think the percentage is lower – as I believe – then the actual census of publishing poets would be greater).

And the common wisdom is that we need to promote poetry in order to get more people to read it. I don’t think that’s the problem. I think we have a lot of people who read poetry, and sadly, too many of them think they can write it.

The consequence is that there are more active poets now than ever, but that the total addressable market for any given book of poems is likely to be much smaller.

This isn’t exactly very encouraging. I think the landscape is such that if you don’t have an MFA your chances of finding a publisher for your poetry is severely diminished. Add to that the increasing nichification of poetry and the number of potential publishers that might consider publishing your poetry is even less. Throw in the economics of publishing and the situation is even bleaker.

To speak in this social context of “the decline of poetry” strikes me as completely missing the mark. It is possible that fewer people are reading certain types of poetry and/or certain types of poets, but there has never been so much poetry being written in the United States. I suspect, but can’t prove, that there has never been so much poetry being read in the U.S. as well, only that it is in a far more decentralized and fragmented fashion than before. We do not have a single national poetry audience, but rather hundreds if not thousands of smaller audiences, some of which overlap with one another, but many of which do not.

Is it any wonder then that our poet laureate doesn’t feel any obligation to promote poetry? Why should he? We’re already reading it.

And the final gem:

I am not at all certain that any MFA program should admit a student who cannot name a minimum of 100 books of contemporary poetry – published in the past 25 years – and say a little about each. And I am not sure that I would graduate any student who did not then seriously read 200 more such books over the next period of time – some schools require as few as 25 – and again could say a little about each. This would lead to far fewer students coming out of these programs with only barebones knowledge of what is being done today, far fewer students having to reinvent the wheel, and a much richer sense of what is actually possible in contemporary poetry, from slams to the new formalism, from flarf to narrative, from the prose poem to visual poetics.

And this is the part that is embarrassing for me. I’m not sure that I could meet the 100 book requirement. And I’ve been writing poetry for 20 years. But to meet this requirement, keeping in mind that I’m not enrolled in any MFA program nor do I currently have plans to enroll in one, but if I did then that would pose a slight problem for me. Off the top of my head I could probably come up with 20 titles and be able to discuss them at length, but 100? I’ve forgotten that many.

It likely wouldn’t take me but a couple of months of study time to become familiar with that many books if I needed to, but that is precisely Silliman’s point, namely, that MFA students, and graduates in particular, should have a better sense of what is going on in the field of poetry in general and in their own niche specifically than today’s graduates do. Furthermore, many of them couldn’t tell you the difference between a synecdoche and a trope either and this is what I mean when I speak of Millennialism - poets should study the craft, contemporary poets as well as the classics, and form some kind of style around the elements of form and content while trying to keep continuity with those who have come before.

World Class Poetry Potpourri
11 January 2008, the poet @ 6:39 pm

Borders is sponsoring an Open Door Poetry Contest.

Edward Byrne is one year old.

Did you write anything today?

How to live a long and happy life.

Does poetry ever speak to life?

Poetry may not be popular, but …

This poet feels dirty critiquing your work.

On poetry and jazz.

Line Reading Series: Poetic MP3s.

Do you publish poetry, your own or someone else’s, on your blog? Do you record poetry podcasts and upload them to your blog? Let me know. If I like what I see or hear, I’ll link to it from the World Class Poetry Blog.

40 Poetry Podcasts You’ll Love
23 December 2007, the poet @ 10:59 pm

If you’re a huge iTunes fan, you’ll love the poetry podcasts available. Podcasting has become very popular and iTunes is at the forefront of that movement. Like to read poetry? You’ll love to hear it read. Today’s top 25 literary iTunes are listed below with those that focus entirely or primarily on poetry highlighted:

1. PotterCast: The Harry Potter Podcast
2. The Classic Tales Podcast
3. APM: Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac
4. The New York Times Book Review Podcast
5. MuggleCast: Harry Potter Podcasting
6. iTunes: Meet The Author
7. NPR: Books
8. PRI: To The Best Of Our Knowledge
9. NOCTURNAL: A Free Scott Sigler Audiobook (this one includes explicit content)
10. “Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn” Audiobook
11. Poetry Magazine Podcast
12. Poem Of The Day
13. Escape Pod
14. NPR: Book Tour
15. Great Books - A Free Podcast Of Masterpieces From The World Of Literature And Poetry
16. Phases: A Twilight Podcast
17. The Essays Of Ralph Waldo Emerson Podcast
18. Playing For Keeps
19. “A Tale Of Two Cities” Audiobook
20. PoemTalk
21. LibriVox Audiobooks
22. alt.NPR: Poetry Off The Shelf
23. Merriam-Webster’s Word Of The Day
24. “Heart Of Darkness” Audiobook
25. Lit Summary Podcast

Many of these podcasts from iTunes are free. More poetry podcasts from iTunes include:

• IndieFeed: Performance Poetry
• Poetry & Literature from Broome Community College
• Digital Poetry @ NJIT
• Poetry On Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work, 1888-2006, Volume I
• The Poet’s Corner: The One-And-Only Poetry Book For The Whole Family by John Lithgow (yes, the actor)
• Poetry PodCast
• Shattered Thought Spoken Word Poetry
• National Champion Performance Poetry (explicit)
• Poetry X Radio
• Poetry Weekly
• Children’s Poetry Time
• Dancing With The Feminine Voice: Reading The Poetry Of Women Writers
• Classic Poetry Aloud
• Houghton Mifflin Poetry Podcast: The Poetic Voice
• miPOradio Poetry

There are plenty more poetry podcasts available through iTunes. Again, many of them are free. Some of them, like John Lithgow’s poetry audiobook require a fee, but you can listen to many poetry podcasts for no charge at all. If you believe poetry is best listened to, then I’d encourage you to check out some of these podcasts that focus on poetry and literature.