World Class Poetry Blog

Every month I like to take a look back at the last month and share with my readers how this blog and its sister site did against themselves for previous months. I know at least one of my readers likes that, but I like to share the information for a couple of reasons. First, for poetry bloggers who may be starting out and not sure of themselves, it could serve as some level of encouragement that growth is possible and may provide some insight into how to obtain that growth. Secondly, I think sharing this information can, and my hope is that it would, be an impetus to discuss what my readers expect in a poetry blog. I particularly like to share what my top posts are because when I look at them I see what may be considered my own strengths and weaknesses as a blogger and I want to play more to my strengths (because I’m selfish that way), but also because I think my regular readers, most of whom I presume are poetry bloggers themselves, can see what people are reading and perhaps find something to take away from the trends they see here and make themselves better bloggers.

That was a long paragraph, but I felt it necessary to explain my larger purpose. It’s more than bragging on myself.

And now, the milk that feeds my ego ….

Top 10 World Class Poetry Blog Posts
I take a look at the top 10 posts of all time occasionally because I like to see if any new posts have nudged their way to the top. If newer posts manage to knock some of the mainstays off the list then that says a lot about what type of poetry discussion my readers are interested in or, at the very least, what may be a big draw for new visitors to the site. So here they are:

• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry - Up from No. 4 last month. How the poetics of film and Aristotle’s principles relate to contemporary poetry.
• How To Market Your Poetry Online - Was first on the list last month. Internet marketing tips for poets.
• Ushering In Black History Month With Poetry By Langston Hughes - Was top post in February 2008. I’m not sure if it’s due to black history month or if it was the poetry of Langston Hughes. Either way, it has staying power.
• Top 10 World Class Poetry Pages - This is the most interesting new development of all, partly because it’s a new member of the list and secondly because this was my first top 10 post - back on December 1, 2007 when this blog was not even three months old. Note that the top 10 list covers World Class Poetry, not WCP blog posts.
• Hyperbole: A Necessary Evil In Poetry Or Politics - One of my earliest posts (Sept. 12, 2007), and it’s been on the list every month. Last month it was No. 2.
• Blog Critique: Poetry By Stacey - One of my most controversial of posts. I don’t know that it will ever get knocked off the list. People must really like to watch a good fight.
• What About My Copyright? - Only three days old. Wow. But note that if I’d made this list on May 1 it wouldn’t have made it. I predict this one will rise higher on the list for next month.
• 40 Poetry Podcasts You’ll Love - I didn’t realize poetry podcasting was so popular. Evidently it is.
• Poetic Craft: Rilke’s Letters Prove His Devotion To Poesy - This is the shortest post on the list. Still a powerhouse.
• On Being A Poet: 7 Things You Should Know - Frivolous post. Shows my whacked out sense of humor.

What can we learn from this list? That I can write long-assed blog posts, and people like them. Is that strange?

May 6: World Class Poetry Blog’s Red Letter Day
Yesterday was a record-breaking day for me. I hit an all-time high in number of RSS subscribers and I received the third highest in traffic numbers in one day for the blog. Not too bad. You’d think it might have something to do with the dumbest of the 20 worst agents, but I doubt it. It likely had more to do with my post on copyrights, a topic of interest to a broad range of creators online. That post did, after all, make the top 10 list, in just two days nonetheless (these stats are reflected through yesterday). Incidentally, yesterday was the day I broke my record in RSS subscribers. Welcome aboard new subscribers!

Another thing, these top 10 posts are for all time, not just for the month of April so some of them may not have had as much recent traffic but received enough traffic early on to keep them on the list. Still, it is a telling list, don’t you think?

Drive-By Shootings: Poetry Traffic Riddles Me With Bullets Of Sweat
April being National Poetry Month didn’t surprise me at all in terms of setting new records. I expected it. I’ve had an upward climb in my stats for well over a year now. Every time I create a new page, in fact, my numbers go up. I hit over 10,000 visits in one month in March so I expected well over that for April. As it turns out, the poetry site hit 14,393 visits and 13,560 unique visitors. The blog had 3,500 visits last month and 3,040 of those were unique visitors.

The blog numbers for April were pretty comparable to what they were in March, surprisingly, but the bright side is that I’ve got nearly 500 repeat visits on the blog. That isn’t too bad for a niche this small and for a blog that’s only been active for a little over half a year. I’ve already seen the poetry site numbers go back down to the neighborhood they were in during March. That just shows that National Poetry Month interests increased the traffic flow to my website, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the traffic to the blog. I have no idea why.

Where’s The Poetry, Pal?!
If you’re wondering what all of this means, so am I. Personally, I’m glad to see the growth. To me, it’s an encouragement. I hope it is as well for my readers. I’d be interested in your feedback. Do you see any meaning in any of this? What type of posts would you like to see more of? Less of? Want to kill me yet?

Ontario Review, R.I.P.

Here’s the strangest interview question that I’ve ever read:

8 - When was the last time you ate a pear?

(Answer) About two weeks ago. The first of the new year.

Rob McLennan knows how to get right to the core.

Poetry comes alive in the hands of Mr. Excitement.

You have until tomorrow to answer Don Wentworth’s question.

Whatever happened to American poetry?

More reasons to download the World Class Poetry Toolbar.

Everything you ever wanted to know about poetry + John Ashbery.

I apologize to my readers for not posting yesterday. I have spent the last two days restoring the blog to its natural state. You see, WordPress (the blog platform that I use) introduced an update and I felt impelled to upgrade to the newer version. Upon doing so around 11 a.m. yesterday morning, I lost everything and have spent the last two days reinstalling WordPress and all of my files. Thank God I didn’t lose anything!

I know now why many bloggers do not use WordPress and go with the free hosts instead. WordPress can be a pain the butt! All in all, though, I am still convinced that WordPress is still the king of blogging platforms. I will not be moving to that other neighborhood near the zoo.

Once again, I do apologize for missing yesterday and I will resume my normal posting schedule tomorrow, Monday, April 28, 2008. Please come back for more poetic insight into the world of poetics in this, the 21st century.

I had projected that I would get 10,000 unique visitors to World Class Poetry in the month of March. I was right. Setting a new record, I ended the month with 10,600 unique visitors, my first month over 10 grand. Those are uniques. My total visitor count was 14,970. I also set a new daily record for visits on March 12 with 683 and a new record for unique visitors in one day on March 31 with 636, but I shattered that yesterday with a whopping 818 visits and 752 unique visitors. April looks to be a not-so-cruel month for WCP. Since it is National Poetry Month, I fully expect April to be another banner month.

The blog is doing equally well. I saw 3,491 visits in March and 3,112 of those were uniques. Not bad for a blog that was started only six months ago. My biggest day to date was March 20 with 376 visits.

It’s equally interesting to look at the content and see which posts have been the most popular. How To Market Your Poetry Online is my most popular post to date. That’s very interesting since it was posted just 20 days ago. Since then it has seen more than 700 page views.

Other popular posts have been:

• Hyperbole: A Necessary Evil … In Poetry Or Politics (one of my earliest posts)
• In Poetry, No Subject Is Taboo
• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry
• My Favorite Poetry Blogs (Thanks Ron Silliman)
• Get Paid For Your Poetry
• Blog Critique: Poetry By Stacey

Interestingly, if I include yesterday in my analytics, An Ode To Alexander Hamilton, which was posted yesterday morning, comes in as the fourth most popular blog post since I started this blog last September.

And that’s the state of World Class Poetry today.

The State Of Religious Poetry Today
Speaking of yesterday, a commentator had this to say about religious poetry:

My own speculation is that most religious poetry today, like much of the contemporary “church” music, has a lack of depth (unlike many of the religious writers of the Renaissance). There seems to be, pardon the cliche, not much meat on the bone. There seems to be a lack of basic biblical/religious literacy that seems to pervade our society and spill over into the literature realm so that we end up with poetry fluff.

I empathize with this reader because this has been my own thought as well for several years. Why don’t religious writers of poetry write with more depth? For one thing, I think that most religious poets do not keep up with the latest trends in poetics. Many of them are still writing trite phrases in iambic pentameter as if mimicking John Donne or William Shakespeare. There is nothing wrong with iambic pentameter, of course, but if you’re going to write that kind of verse, whether religious or not, you need to bring something new to the park bench, which most poets don’t do. Your meter may be traditional, but your subject matter or the way that you present your subjects must be new and unique, and that’s where many religious poets fall short. They’re stuck on “Jesus loves me” and have forgotten that there may be other ways to say it, or to show it, than simply using Biblical language that one can read by picking up a leatherbound KJV.

I hate to commit to a month-long project on this blog because I never know when my full-time job will require more and I have to break a commitment, which I hate to do. I’m one who doesn’t like to commit unless I am sure that I can fulfill the commitment. Funny quirk I have.

But I would like to post a religious poem every day for the month of April. Especially since I got at least one reader to acknowledge me on that last post. There are some religious poets I admire. Donne, of course, is at the top of the list. And my favorite is Gerard Manley Hopkins. I will try to find quality religious poems that I can share throughout April. Some of them may be my own, but others will not (likely, most of them will not be). If I falter at this, please forgive me. I am only human, but I will do my level best.

The first poem I’d like to share is this one by Denise Levertov:

The Servant-Girl at Emmaus (A Painting by Velasquez)

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his - the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face - ?

The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching
                                     the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

Notice how very different this poem is than your typical Jesus freak verse. How well laid out it is from the very beginning. Not in traditional verse at all, rather written like the postmodern free verse that it is. Yet, we know immediately what the poem is about, a certain man from a moment in history nearly 2,000 years ago.

If it weren’t for the title, we might not know in the first stanza who the man is. There is a mystery to it. The subject is a woman. The repetitive “listens” in the first line set up for what follows perfectly. Then the enjambment is in itself spellbinding. Words like “holding”, “touching”, and “listening” ending lines that lead to greater mystery. And the indented line toward the end of the poem - how jarring that the winejug gives the impression that there is an indenture in the air of the place of this setting, though the poem never tells us in so many words.

Again, without the title of the poem, by the end of the second stanza, when we know that the man has laid his hands on “the dying”, we are intrigued. Who is this man? This mysterious stranger. Is this a love poem? It is, but not the type of love poem we might imagine.

The mystery continues, and well.

The single line about his face, broken with a dash and a question mark. So simple a technique, but not common. Brevity in beautiful measure. And the perfect lead-in to the next three lines …

The man they’d crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

There is no question who those lines can be about. If we did not know by now, we know for certain now. This man is the crucified Lord, Jesus of Nazareth, God in the flesh. His crucifixion so appealingly alluded to, his disappearance from the tomb, the rumors of his appearance to the women on the road … clues, yet no mention of his name. There is no “Jesus” in this poem, but we know who it is about. We know because of the subtle and crafty way that the poetess has lead us to discovery. And that’s what makes this poem a success. It appeals to our knowledge of the past while not spelling anything out. It leaves just enough to the imagination that all we need are the subtle hints, then the spirit (of the poem) does the rest.

It was unintentional, but I forgot to post on Easter. I started working on a new site design and lost track of all time. I just forgot. Sorry. And Happy Easter! It’s time for bed. Good night.

Critic says Lehman’s erotic anthology sucks.

And now, a gift:

Each week, in my e-zine Hyperbole, I publish former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s column American Life In Poetry. I’d like to print this week’s column in today’s blog post.

American Life in Poetry: Column 155

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

The American poet Elizabeth Bishop often wrote of how places–both familiar and
foreign–looked, how they seemed. Here Marianne Boruch of Indiana begins her
poem in this way, too, in a space familiar to us all but made new–made
strange–by close observation.

Hospital

It seems so–
I don’t know. It seems
as if the end of the world
has never happened in here.
No smoke, no
dizzy flaring except
those candles you can light
in the chapel for a quarter.
They last maybe an hour
before burning out.
And in this room
where we wait, I see
them pass, the surgical folk–
nurses, doctors, the guy who hangs up
the blood drop–ready for lunch,
their scrubs still starched into wrinkles,
a cheerful green or pale blue,
and the end of a joke, something
about a man who thought he could be–
what? I lose it
in their brief laughter.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation
(www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported
by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem
copyright (c) 2006 by Marianne Boruch, whose most recent book of poetry is
“Grace, Fallen from,” Wesleyan University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from
“TriQuarterly,” Issue 126, by permission of Marianne Boruch. Introduction
copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted
Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

To subscribe to Hyperbole, head over to World Class Poetry. I have a free gift for you there.

I am constantly trying to improve the services I offer poets and poetry lovers, both on my website and on my blog. I have recently made some changes and additions that I think you will love (or not).

On the blog, I’ve moved the World Class Poetry Search feature to the left sidebar to make room for the World Class Bookstore. Right now, you’ll see an Amazon search box there instead, but soon you will see the WCP bookstore icon. Stay tuned; coming soon.

The World Class Poetry Toolbar is picking up speed as more and more people are starting to use it now. Thanks to those of you who have faith! Through the toolbar, you have access to several RSS feeds including the World Class Poetry Blog and website, Davy Barry’s blog, Yahoo! Arts, Guardian Unlimited, and The Village Voice. You also have a cool messaging feature that allows you to communicate with everyone using the toolbar (great for marketing your own poetry books and website or blog), and you can browse YouTube videos and Flickr photos from the toolbar. Plus, you can listen to hundreds of radio stations from the toolbar as well and you can search the Web. More features on the way soon. Just click the toolbar banner on the right sidebar of the blog to get yours.

At the World Class Poetry website, I’ve uploaded several poetry audio files. You can now listen to me reading one of several poems that have been published at various places, some online and some off line. But these are poems that are previously published and some of them are poems that I wrote while stationed in Iraq in 2005. A list of the poem titles include:

• How To Write A Poem
• Tree
• Love and War
• Music
• Battlefield Confession
• Life
• 20 Acres

On each page there is a written version of the poem and a link to the audio recording. Just click the link above to go to the page where that poem is written and where the audio recording has been uploaded. There will be more such features coming soon.

You can stay up to date with all World Class Poetry developments by subscribing to my newsletter, Hyperbole. Your information is kept private and never shared. Each week you’ll receive an issue of the e-zine with the latest uploads and updates to both the World Class Poetry Blog and World Class Poetry website.

Stay on top of each daily World Class Poetry blog by subscribing to my RSS feed. Ad-Free, you can read the entire post of every blog post I write in the news reader of your choice.

I’m trying something new based on two values. The first value is success and the second value is desire. On desire, I’d like to monetize my blog in some way, but I don’t want to sacrifice the value of my content to my readers. On success, I’ve managed to be successful in implementing Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate links at World Class Poetry, which has set new records for traffic (see below).

Therefore, I’ve decided to run a test. At the bottom of this post you’ll see some Google AdSense links. I plan to include these as long as they can remain unobtrusive and not detract from my content. My No. 1 concern is that I maintain a consistency in valuable content for my readers. If the ads take away from that then they’ve got to go. I’d be interested in your feedback on this test run.

I realize that I have two types of readers. The first type of reader is the die-hard poet or lit lover who truly likes what I have to say about poetics and is interested in reading the content for its value. The second type of reader is the reader who may be looking for information on poetry or looking for poetry to read and finds my blog after performing a search through one of the search engines or through one of the social networks to which I belong. I am not exactly what they were looking for, but I managed to pique their interest in some way so they entered the blog to see what I have to say. The first type of reader may subscribe to my RSS feed or may not. Nevertheless, she will return again. The second type of reader will not subscribe to my feed nor return again. I’m OK with that.

The ads are intended to serve that second type of reader - the reader who might have some interest in poetry as a subject, maybe because he is doing research for high school or college or maybe it is just a hobby. Either way, that reader doesn’t really care about the subject of poetics or information about contests and other such content that deals with what is happening in poetics today. I figure if they aren’t going to stick around long or become a regular reader then I can give them a graceful exit and cull a few cents of profit from the value they do receive while they are here - and it won’t cost them anything at all while doing so.

There will doubtlessly be some people who will accuse me of selling out or decide that I am a capitalist pig and refuse to have anything to do with me. I for one don’t see a problem with someone trying to earn a living - even a small one - doing what it is they love. I’d like to know what others think, at any rate. If the ads detract from your reading experience, please let me know. If you find them unobtrusive enough, I’d like to know that too. Do they look gaudy and unappealing? Should I change the colors? I want to know your thoughts.

I have other ideas for monetization that I may implement at some time in the future. But I am taking this slowly. I don’t want to bombard my readers with come ons and “in your face” marketing attacks. That’s not what this is all about. So, feedback welcome. Please give.

World Class Poetry Continues To Grow
I started World Class Poetry, the website not the blog, in the summer of 2005 while deployed with my National Guard unit to Iraq. During steady-state operations I had some extra free time between my shifts for personal time for a period of about three months. I used that time to start the website and built about ten pages. When my situation changed and I started working more hours to prepare for redeployment back to the States, I could not work on it at all. Even after returning home, I was so preoccupied with recalibrating my life, rebuilding familial relationships, starting a business, and adapting to a new home, that I could not work on the site for almost a year. Once I got my income level to a comfortable point in my business, I decided to quit working the long hours and focus a part of my time on the poetry website. That was late in 2006.

In November 2006, I had 1,035 visits to the website, of which 724 were unique visitors. My average daily visitor count was 24. Average daily visits was 34. In February 2007 those numbers were 1,535 total visits, 1,168 unique visitors, 54 average daily visits, and 41 daily visitors on average. I’ve watched those numbers steadily rise over the course of the last year as I have been consistent in adding pages and increasing my content. One year later, February 2008, I had 422 daily visits on average and 306 average daily visitors. My total traffic for the month was 12,247 visits and 8,875 unique visitors. I had 20,657 total page views.

By Web standards, those are not great statistics. But for poetry websites, those numbers are pretty good. These figures represent 797% growth over the course of one year from February 2007 to February 2008. And I’m just getting started. I see these figures just getting bigger and bigger as I continue to add new content.

On February 25, 2008, I hit a new high in daily traffic. That day, I had 682 visits and 642 unique visitors. It was my first day over 600. I remember just a few months ago being excited about my daily traffic count hitting 300. Now I get more than 300 visits (and unique visitors) on a regular basis. I suspect that sometime in April (National Poetry Month) I will see my first 1,000 visit day. I expect to reach more than 10,000 visits (and possibly unique visitors) in March.

I’ve seen similar traffic patterns with the World Class Poetry Blog. I started the blog in September 2007. Since then my traffic has grown to 2,723 visits for the month of February and 2,266 of those were unique visitors. That means I got almost 500 return visits in the month of February. That’s just a few numbers shy of my traffic numbers in October when I started tracking the blog’s traffic.

My top blog posts for the month of February 2008 were:

• Ushering In Black History Month With Poetry By Langston Hughes
• Blog Critique: Poetry By Stacey
• Ekphrastic Poem Contest And Litmags
• Poetics: The 7 Essential Elements Of Poetry
• Why Book Critics Are Losing Their Dog Gone Influence
• Are You A Poet Or - Shriek! - A “Hobbyist”?
• Hyperbole: A Necessary Evil … In Poetry Or Politics
• Poetry Potpourri, Volume 4 - Books, Poems, And Other Debris
• Mary Oliver’s “Cold Poem” Shows Us Our Own Sweet Devouring
• 40 Poetry Podcasts You’ll Love

This is a very revealing list. With the exception of two of these posts, the list represents a collection of expository writings about poetry and poetics, what I consider to be my primary strength. I have, for as long as I can remember, always excelled at this type of writing, and I might add, I rather enjoy it. The post requesting entries into an ekphrastic poem contest, though it was widely read, did not get much reaction. No one entered. That disappointed me, but it shows that perhaps those types of endeavors are not in my repertoire. It will be a long time before I sponsor another one of those. But you can look forward to more of the expository writing.

In fact, soon I will expand on one of my favorite topics. A few days ago I wrote a post titled, “Mellennial Poetics: A New Way Of Thinking About Craft.” I will soon - maybe tomorrow - begin a series of posts that will expand on those points (there are 9 of them). I will delve a little deeper into each point of poetics addressed in that post. I invite you to return to read what I have to say. To my regular readers, I’d like to say thanks for staying with me this long. To those just passing through, I’d like to leave you with a thought: I hope you’ll keep you an open mind.

If you are a regular reader of World Class Poetry Blog, you’ve noticed that I’ve gone 148 days in a row posting to this blog. That’s almost five full months. And I would have kept it going and broke some kind of record or something, but yesterday I didn’t post at all. I must apologize.

I had spent two-and-a-half hours crafting a blog post and within minutes of having it ready to go live my Internet access went kaput. I’d like to step up and take responsibility, but instead I’m going to pass the buck. My Internet service went down. It was 1 a.m. Time for bed.

I don’t know when my ISP solved its problems, but I do know I missed posting to this blog for the first time since I started it. I feel so guilty. I hope when I attend confession that my priest will give me a light penance.

At any rate, I will be posting this evening - barring no more surprises, of course - and have a great blog post prepared where I critique a reviewer of a book of essays about poems. Let’s see, I guess that makes me a poetry essayist book reviewer critic. Well, whatever you want to call me, I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed - the icon at the top of the left sidebar of this blog - so that you don’t miss it and the next 148 great blog posts I have planned for you.

Tracy Repchuk wrote a great article titled “Top 10 Ways To Get Your Poetry Promoted.” I think you’d find it an interesting read.

Repchuk is president and founder of Canadian Federation of Poets and president and founder of Poetry Canada magazine. Her tips are absolutely right on. Here they are in a nutshell:

1. Post it at the office
2. Make your own cards or calendar
3. Create a chapbook
4. Send it to your local paper
5. Submit to magazines
6. Attend an open mic
7. Snail mail a poem
8. Crash a Karaoke Night
9. Enter a contest
10. Help poetry to help you

I like the idea of reading your poetry at karaoke night. I haven’t thought of that. You can also join an artists in the schools or poets in the schools program and share your poetry with students. You can send them to local or national radio shows. NPR has some great poetry shows. Other ways to promote your poetry in the 21st century include:

• Blogging
• Publish a website
• Podcast your poems
• Submit them to free distribution sites like Buzzle
• Ask other bloggers to critique them on their blogs (send me your poem and I’ll critique it right here on World Class Poetry Blog
• Add a photo or graphic to it and distribute it as a free .pdf broadside
• You can also make print broadsides

There are countless ways to promote your poetry. These are just a few ideas. You can likely come up with your own. To read Repchuk’s entire article, head over to World Class Poetry. We now have an articles section of our website. Feel free to submit your own articles on poetry.

Be sure to look for daily and weekly updates to the World Class Poetry articles section. We will continue to publish great articles on poetry and poetics. Get the weekly updates by e-mail when you subscribe to Hyperbole e-zine (and you’ll get a free .pdf broadside of my poem “Tattoo”).