July 17: A message from Johnathon Williams (sic) showed up a New-Poetry yesterday:
Over at Linebreak, we've just launched a new project that we're pretty
excited about. Swindle is a daily aggregator of contemporary poetry. Every
hour or so, it scrapes the RSS feeds from a dozen poetry publications and
posts links to all of the new poems out there. Updates are automatic; the
only human involvement is in the selection of the feeds that Swindle
targets.
Right now, sources include The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and From the Fishouse, to name just a few.
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Alas, I couldn't keep from kneeing what seems an innocent and worthwhile attempt to help contemporary poetry:
Gosh, that's sure enough to excite me. But just so Jeff and Chris won't jump on me for negativity, here's some boilerplate of mine I still (however futilely) consider constructive: what we need is a list of the schools of poetry. If we had one that established names for the various contemporary poetries out there, then (1) ideas with potential like this one might actually do more than guide Wilshberians to poetry they're already being exposed to everywhere and more, and (2) allow this operation possibly to mount a superior search engine, or just a decent index, to help Wilshberians avoid interesting . . . oops, I was going to be nice--to help browsers to poetry they are likely to like BUT maybe also connect them to poetry they're ignorant of but which might, based on their tastes, appeal to them--for instance, someone who likes "The Red Wheelbarrow" might be directed to Modern Haiku and from there to mildly unconventional haiku, and so forth until he ends up looking at one of my early visual or mathematical haiku (which aren't that unconventional).
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Later I grieve to tell you, I went off the wagon. I've scrupulously avoided caffeinated soft drinks for at least a month--and been wearier even than usual for a month (though with many other possible causes including my recent surgical procedure). As a scientific experiment I thought I'd dose myself with Code Red to see what would happen. I've now had two glasses of it, about 8 ounces, each, I think (hard to tell because I load my glasses with ice). I do feel much more ready to do things than I did. Not sure I will. I both hope it doesn't help me and that it does. WHo wants to be an addict? But addiction is better than being a slug.
One last bit of news: I sent off my review of Vernon Frazer's Emblematic Moon, and it seems to have been well-received. It still has to pass inspection by two more editors, though. I'm reasonably happy with it. It certainly got me profitably into Vernoon's poem, which is worth getting into.
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