Rob’s post about Snakeskin got me to submit something. Maybe this will be the start of a new phase in my life where I get off my duff and pursue publication.

God, it would be so much easier if I could be a superpoeticgenius and editors would come to me. Ha!

Oh, and if you go to Rob’s blog, congratulate him on his commended poem in the UK National Poetry Competition.

A few weeks ago, I commented on liking a few poems in an online journal, and I mused over whether each of the named editors liked each of the published poems.

Why do I wonder? Because I’m again wondering about poetry genres, and poetic touchstones.

You go to a bookstore. You want to buy a book. The books are grouped according to genre. Imagine simply being pitched into the bookstore with no groupings. Imagine the books have no dust-jackets. How would you figure out what to read? Genres are defined by the publisher based on the expectations of the reader.

Poetry is never going to work that way, I recognize. But I also think that the diversity in poetry is something of a barrier. It isn’t closeminded to have preferences. It isn’t wrong to lean toward certain aesthetics and away from others. Too often, I’ve seen poets or critics getting a label of rigidity or one-trick-ponyness or parochial attitudes though, of course, it can matter where the tastes of the accuser and the accused lie.

Fiction is generally defined by its plot more than its style. That’s an impossible task for poetry. How many poems aren’t about death or love in some way? How many poems actually have a plot? Some do. Some would if we knew what the poet was thinking. Some simply don’t and never will.

Some objective categorization is possible, certainly. We can see if a poem is in a form, even a nonce form, or is free verse, or is a prose poem. We can see if a poem is long or short, if it’s enjambed or endstopped, if it’s got initial caps or none, if it’s left-justified or not. Still objectively, we can say if it has imagery, if it’s written in “standard” grammar, if it contains allusions to other work.

The addition of biography or author commentary can help further objective categorization. Eras, sex, schools, influences, references, even careers.

Subjectively, we can categorize further. But though we can say that a poem is fresh or surreal or cliched or too long or too short or boring or sad or exciting, how can my saying that mean anything to you unless you know what I mean by any of those terms? To know what I mean, you have to know me, and once you know me, do you need to know what I mean? If I say “read this” and I’m someone whose taste you admire (you fool!) then I don’t need to defend it. If I’m someone whose taste you abhor (smart person) then I can’t defend it. (For example, I read Roger Ebert’s movie reviews because I know that he will review things in a consistent way. I won’t necessarily agree with his rating, but I can extrapolate, from my knowledge of his previous reviews, whether I’ll consider a movie worth seeing.)

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that differentiation in poetry is subjective and personality-driven. So what?

Well, the sheer number of poems written prevents there from being an Ebert, or even a dozen Eberts. A handful of poets can get Ebertized, but the rest are relatively obscure. I might recognize a name you don’t, and even more likely you’ll recognize a name I don’t. And neither of us knows what the other knows.

I think if poets, or poetry readers, want to increase readership of our favorite artform, we need to lower this barrier, not by limiting publication or changing journals or zines, but through reportage. Who I am influences what I like. If you’ve liked what I’ve liked, chances are better you’ll continue to like what I like.

This is where, I hope, the strengths of the internet come into play, and this is where my project starts. Stay tuned!

I just got done tinkering with another internet gadget, this time so you can see what links other people follow.

Of course, after tinkering with it for however long, I wonder why anyone would be interested. Then I realize that if I’m on a blog, I’m interested to know what other readers are interested in.

I told you I was a sheep. Baa.

Over at 32 Poems there’s a discussion about poetry blogging, and whether writing a blog is “despicable.”

My husband thinks so. As much as I love him, sometimes he’s completely insane.

Steven Schroeder has created a NCAA tournament pool just for poets.

I am wildly incompetent at such things, but I joined. I’m a joiner.

I got my first assessment back from my course, and I got a 98%. That’s a great score.

Why, then, do I feel so let down by it? Almost angry. Frustrated. Nauseated. I’m upset and I don’t know why. I don’t think I expected a higher score. I wish I understood my own brain sometimes.

On another front, I decided to try workshopping again. I picked a poem that’s a bit of a departure for me, mostly because I couldn’t tell if it was worth working on. I became more than slightly freaked out by that, too, but that’s my normal reaction to workshopping. I am a jittery, jittery soul.

I read too many blogs and I link to too many blogs and there are still others I haven’t linked to yet and I’m completely disorganized and I think I broke my brain.

If you know I hang out at your blog and stare at you but I don’t have a link to you, it’s almost certainly because you have cooties. But it could be that I don’t know that I don’t have a link to you, and you don’t know that I don’t know that I don’t have a link to you. Until now.

I really don’t like him. At all. He pays no attention to anything I say.

But I need to go four times a year to get my Depo shot, so in I go. I try to tell myself that he ignores me because he’s an ESL speaker, which is brutally unfair to other ESL speakers who don’t ignore me, but it’s my attempt to cope with a doctor I dislike.

I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t I get a different doctor? Because the one doctor I know I like is my husband’s, and I have a weird distaste for seeing my husband’s doctor. Besides, he’s not a gynecologist. As far as I know.

Cobalt

Blue is white. A pinch of cobalt turns
the weave of yellow fiberglass to snow.
Like veins in pallid wrists, no one discerns
the brittle gleam of blue too far below
the shiny surface. Skin is almost glass:
too blue or pretty and the surface cracks
with ice or brittle chemistry. We’re past
the days of arsenic or lead; our tracks
lead off to melanoma from the sun
that makes us brown. And still the gasps of blue
depleted veins scream out for oxygen,
and still the pretty fibers break in two
so glass can pierce the skin and welcome red,
that in its turn can turn us blue and dead.

My office door is rattling on its hinges, and I’m about to go all berserker on HDA. This Monday has spurred my righteous wrath!

How can it be that warm out there with such a frosty breeze in here?