Elsewhere in e-world, folks are ranting about how blog is killing poetry.
Let’s be totally straight about this:
Blogs are not killing poetry. Poets writing bad poetry are killing poetry.
Guy LeCharles Gonzalez said this, and I agree with him. I would like to add this: Blogging is not a substitute for writing poetry and reading poetry. Blogging is not a substitute for developing effective social and marketing skills as a poet in the literary industry.
Rather than get negative about “bad poetry,” I will qualify what I believe is great poetry, the kind of poetry I find meaningful and enjoyable, which continues to be written by poets, and even blogging poets:
The poetry that tries its best to understand our place and condition in the world, spiritually, historically, culturally, politically. Poetry that seeks to connect with readers and audience, and in doing so, growing community. Poetry that grows larger than the individual I, taking on the beauty and the problem of we. Poetry that seeks to do all these things with a keen sense of music and a deep love of language.
(I copied and pasted this from my previous post on poetic greatness here.)
I am a broken record on the subject of blogging. In my recent interview with Rachelle Cruz, she asked me to talk a little bit about blogging, its dailiness, and how it is useful to me as a poet. I’ll reiterate quickly some points: as poets, including being poets published by independent presses, we need to be able to have a public presence. Editors and educators find me and contact me here.
What I really should have mentioned on Rachelle’s show is that especially as poets of color, as women of color, as politicized women of color authors, we need to have visibility and voice in the literary world and in the literary marketplace, not as bodies and objects of exotica or the current “it” thing in politically correct multi-culti lit. We need to be able to define, to control our literary careers; we need to be able to represent ourselves, and to speak for ourselves and our work. While others in the literary industry have called me an activist, a term with which I am not completely comfortable, again I just believe it is very important to be in control of our own careers.
This blog is a tool in which to formulate my ideas for new poetic projects and work through poetic drafts, line breaks, syntax, tone; in which to mull over cultural phenomena; in which to communicate with readers and students about my development as a writer, my writing and writing process, how these are informed by my political beliefs and historical and cultural knowledge. In other words, I talk about myself here all the time. This is the more favorable alternative to having others presume to speak for me.
Blogging is unlike my author website, in that the content of this blog is dynamic and interactive. Unlike Facebook, the content of this blog is accessible to anyone online. Unlike Twitter, the content of this blog has more than adequate space to be substantial, critical, and complex.
I may eventually cave in on other Web 2.0 social media. My sister who is a marketing executive in Silicon Valley mentioned to me last weekend that I would be good at Twitter, given Oscar’s and my constant attending of literary and cultural events, reading books, et al. I am thinking about it but don’t hold your breath.
I’m not even sure that people writing bad poetry is killing poetry. People praising bad poetry, that’s not a good thing and it happens quite a bit in bloggoland. I’ve always liked your emphasis on poetry as communication, a way of binding communities. It marks a very fundamental difference in thinking with wide implications. In my mind making the distinction between poetry as selfexpression and poetry as communication leads one to an emphasis on traditional craft as opposed to unrestrained experimentation for its own sake. I resisted Twitter for a long time but now I have found it a very useful tool, somethings don’t require more than 140 characters and there is a transience to it, like a thought stream, that mirrors real life.
Thanks for this comment Paul. Interesting what you say re: “people praising bad poetry.” I’ve been thinking about this, and wondering why it is. Also I like very much what you say about poetry as self-expression versus poetry as communication. I hear students say that all the time: “poetry is self-expression,” or even just “poetry is expression.” I always want to know … expression of what, and why, and then why is that important?
Love this post. If it were not for public spaces like blogs (including yours) I would not feel as connected to other writers of color. Sure, now I go to as many readings and community events as possible, but in the beginning I did not know how to reach out. Blogs make critical and artistic communication so much more possible.
Hi Niki, yes I like that we can do both attend as many events as our lives will permit, and then continue on with the discussions in e-world. Or vice versa, right? Meet one another in e-world, and carry these relationships into the “real” world – which is what we’ll be doing with the Kapwa Conference and future events.
I sat on a panel this weekend at the Saints & Sinners Lit Fest in New Orleans about using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The argument that these types of sites cause bad poetry or distract from writing good poetry is hogwash. Handling your online presence is 90 percent time management. Many are looking for an excuse not to write and trying to place their own lack of focus on the Internet. Turn it off and go write a poem.
Hey Collin, I am not sure if you follow Guy, who I mentioned in this post. I think you may enjoy his writings. I’ve never met him in person, I know him online via Oscar, and he is an advocate of using social networking as writers’ tools for marketing ourselves and controlling our careers.
Absolutely yes on time management, as with all of our work, right? How many of us have procrastinated til the very last painful minute to write that 20 page paper, you know? And we do know in those instances to BLAME OURSELVES for not doing better, for acting against our better judgment. Same thing holds with the internet.
It’s true. Blogging is the gift of the gab. It means different for different people. It’s how we perceive it to be.