BMC Week Two
Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Didn’t get a lot of writing done during my second week, but I read a great deal & thought about what I was reading, which is often the way I feed the work. I like the semi-solitude here, but a month of it will be enough. As with most arts colonies, one is able to participate as much or as little in group activities. I tend to be a loaner, though I do enjoy the dinner conversations.
Beautiful weather today — nearly cloudless sky, a little cool this morning but promising warmth by afternoon. The forcast says the next couple of days will be the same. I haven’t really minded the rainy days we’ve had since I’m not a big hiker, boater or swimmer (I’m a walker); but the sparkling lake this morning is a joy.
Reading: Hayden Carruth’s Collected Shorter Poems, John Dewey’s Art as Experience, William Barrett’s The Illusion of Technique, Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air, & John Ashbery’s Notes from the Air. About half of this is new reading, half things I’ve read before. Naturally, in my reading & in my own work I’m still fussing with the relationship between word & thing, mind & world. I’ve been fussing at these issues since I was eighteen, so why should I stop now? This is certainly a lovely place for such fussing.
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12 Responses to “BMC Week Two”
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A QUESTION ABOUT WISH AND FULFILLMENT:
1.BLOODSTONE MOONSTONE CONCRETE CANARIES
Candy & Cone
always
where is love
Gnomic Utterances
From The Pin To The Pindrop
The Not-One-More-List-Blues
San Francisco Mindwalk
Salad Bar At JouJou’s, peacetime
Everything Is Beautiful: Eternally
Bobby
Sprig Of Lilac
Beautifulintelligenteventemperedhealthykind
Gold Leaf/Last Hug
Gambling Music For Garden Pyres
Snowblood
remembering Lawrence Fixel the writerman
Devotion
dew point
The Keys
Young And Angry
Saving Generous Untethered Seacoast
Receiver Off The Hook
Snow Ride &
The Visionary
Reaction Attack Creation
Perishing Republics Drink/A Blood-Dimmed Tide When/Heartleaps And Deep Hopes/Of Peace Sink Into Wartimes
Tuna Angels Fruits Or Flags
Award-Winning Brain Mutation
In My Village
What Is Liberty
Life’s Not An Arrow
2.VELMA TYRONE’S MOM
who hardly looks 50 at noon
told me that Tyrone now 35
has a kid & a jerky heart that
kept him out of the military &
has pretty much gotten out of
hoods & his wife’s a Filipina.
Velma in Freedom West Coop again now 15 years is
retired from the Post Office
[sorting in Evans Street, ugh!]
and feels like she’s due to live
and her new husband likes
wearing fresh clothes & she’d
had to break him of it or be
washing clothes all the time.
EDWARD MYCUE
What a peaceful lake! That would be the ideal place for meditating.
Hi Joe!
I’ve started blogging, and I must say, it’s much more difficult than I thought. I have even more respect for yours after a short few weeks of trying this.
I’m hoping to move way beyond the diary/journal approach, but I’ve also been concerned about publishing stuff on the Web before I (hopefully) publish elsewhere in hard copy.
Carole and I were talking about it, and she told me a few horror stories about people whose Web-based work was ripped off and distributed widely before they could get it published in journals, etc.
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Hope you can check out my blog, and I’d appreciate any suggestions/advice.
http://stickerkitty.wordpress.com/
Cathy in Colton
Cathy, my advice, such as it is, would be to not say anything on your blog that you don’t want everyone to know. I’m actually a pretty reticent blogger. When I began I tended to post political rants & I still do that occasionally, but I don’t actually put a lot of “personal” stuff on my blog beyond the things I’m doing in my life that relate to poetry, art, dogs, friends, politics. When I began, I thought I would use blog entries to work out issues in my writing, etc. but I find I don’t really do that. I keep a private notebook (written in No. 2 pencil) for that sort of thing. I also almost never put my poems on my blog because I’m afraid the editor of some journal who might otherwise publish something of mine would consider it already published “on the internet.” (This raises the issue of internet journals & the meaning of online publication, but that’s a topic for another day.) In general, especially as you begin, it’s best to err on the side of reticence, especially if you are blogging under your own name. But even blogging under a pseudonym doesn’t ultimately protect you from exposure.
In order to protect my privacy AND to express myself freely on my blog, I use a pseudonym and have set restricted access. Hopefully it should work.
May,
Yeah, I’m using the pseudonym, too, but not sure what you mean by restricted access. Do only your friends and any others whom you’ve approved get to read your blog?
Thanks to both of you for the tips, Joe and May.
The Kitteh
Exactly.
It is enough to include in the blog settings the list of the authorized people. I realize that this might sound a bit anti-democratic but for different reasons, mainly associated with my work and with the content of my blog, I cannot act differently. Also, if you meet someone new, you can always add him/her and in a minute they are able to access.
Good luck!
May, I was sorry to see you had closed your blog down. Thanks for stopping by.
May and Joe,
Thanks for this info. I think I’m hoping to develop a broader audience than just approved readers, but who knows? That may change in the future. I’m still a newbie.
Cheers,
Kitteh
JD, I have replied by e-mail.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be satisfied with just approved readers, but I also understand that one of the most interesting things about blogging as a medium is that it can be so many things to so many people. May’s approach is one of many — after all, blogging is not really a genre with genre requirements, but a technology or a medium. And while a writing technology may shape discourse, blogging is remarkably flexible.
And, actually, come to think of it, when I said above that I don’t use the blog to work out ideas, I think now that is a failing — one I hope to rectify in coming weeks. When I began, I did much more of that. One of the cool things about this discussion is the way it made me look again at the blogging habits I’ve fallen into.
Yeah, I like that idea of using a blog to work out one’s ideas–writing to think. Very helpful.