Entry 410 — Miscellaneous Thoughts, No. 14
It seems to be I ought to give all my random or miscellaneous thoughts entries the same name, and number them, so I’m going to do that from now on. This is number 14, because–after going through my previous such posts–my guess is that thirteen of them consisted of genuinely miscellaneous thoughts.
First, an e.mail of mine to the National Book Critic Circle that I’m a member of:
Not sure where to send this, so it’s to you:
Several times I’ve gone to the NBCC blog and wanted to comment on something there only to find I wasn’t allowed to, as just now, when I visited the entry about the Iranian-American poet’s book. I’m curious why you bar comments to certain texts. It seems rather against the idea of criticism and open debate that an organization like ours should favor.
As one who devotes probably too much time to Internet discussions, I’m well aware of the negatives of unmoderated comment threads, but (being pretty immoderate) I’m on the side of open discussions, anyway. One suggestion would be to close comments that got too extreme, but having an external free-for-all place to go to continue the discussion. And/or maybe a limit on number of posts to a given thread by one person. 3 to 5? That might force each of the person’s posts to be better thought-out.
Since I’m imposing on you already, I may as well tell you that I thought the interview I wasn’t allowed to comment on was interesting. I merely wanted to express a hope that the series highlight a few micro-presses, which university presses and the small presses winning NBCC awards never are, although in your introduction to the series you lump all of these together. The small press (which includes the university presses) publishes the same sort of poetry (which, as a poet, is all I really know about–but which, as a long-time poetry critic, I feel I know a lot about) the “major” presses publish; ditto many micro-presses, at least some of the time, but micro-presses, so far as I’m aware, are the only presses that publish what I call “otherstream” poetry (almost, since a few times a decade a maverick professor will get a university press to publish it).
Next a reply to something Geof said the other day at his blog:
I’ve always thought, “the only reader that must matter to the poet is the poet,” but have long believed that part of what gives pleasure to me as a poet is my vicarious enjoyment of the pleasure I believe others will get from my poem.” In fact, I think perhaps I could not make poems without a belief that somewhere someone will enjoy it.
Later clarification: “To clarify what I said, I consider the only engagent of a poem of mine who counts is me, but that my me includes the selves of all whom I hope will visit my poem.”
Finally, my opinion of a text in one of Emerson’s journals, Napoleon’s name with it re-spelled one line below it in Greek letters, than re-spelled line by line under that, each line losing the first letter of the previous line:
I think it’s a trivial word game. So trivial that I’m close to defining a new classification of verbal expression: “frivoliture,” for verbal works that don’t attempt to advocate proper behavior, express beauty or state truth, but are for fun only. Crossword puzzles. Pat, pit, put, pot, pet. Acrostics. Yes, some works called concrete poems.
Tags: neologisms