Sunday, December 05, 2004
I'm saving R/ckets & S/ntries to my hard drive. that means copy the archives and, maybe this is anal, reverse the chronological order, so that earliest post is 1st not last. Blogger should allow the choice. I like the project of R&S. it gave me a daily push. blogs are process. they depend on fairly regular postings. there's 600 pieces on R&S, but I get the feeling that once I stop adding to it (which I guess I have) it will lose relevance. same for this blog, for any blog. I'll probably deep six R&S once I've gutted it. I mean to start something else but I don't know what. how about a fuckin' crush list, something smarmy like that?
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3 comments:
HI Allen:
From the moment I started the *fait accompli* Crush Lists
I expected there to be many more comments like this- the definition of smarmy is
Definition: [adj] unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech; "buttery praise"; "gave him a fulsome introduction"; "an oily sycophantic press agent"; "oleaginous hypocrisy"; "smarmy self-importance"; "the unctuous Uriah Heep"
- but there have been, amazingly, very few such negative comments.
Of course, I have the feeling you are kidding around about this, and don't mean to use the word to literally mean it quite so strongly! But I will admit to coming down quite definitively on the side of poets being much more generally supportive of one another-as bloggers generally are, anyway- and to try to cut back on the endless, manipulative, empty, pointless canonizing. Nobody, absolutely nobody knows who is going to be or who deserves to b remembered as a poet. Whitman died as the owner of 99% of the copies of his books lining his New Jersey walls. Nobody had ever heard of Kafka when he died; Baudelaire was chiefly, and hardly, known as an art critic, etc, etc. On the other hand, maybe canonizing is better than no recognition at all for any poet, as there are few enough readers. What I dislike even more is the- mostly masculine- put-downs and grousing and irritiable grumbling about "bad poetry." Anyway, 99% of support of individual poets is self-serving on somebody's part who is setting themselves up as an agent or agency. I guess it's the diviseness I dislike most of all that comes out of over praising one poet or one group of poets over another.
The large majority of blogs that have been placed on the *fait accompli* "crush list" (originally meant to gently tease Jim Behrle about his "crush lists ) have been blogs that have recently linked to *fait accompl*- a good number of which have emerged as well worth reading every day.
I wasn't thinking of your crush list but Behrle's, which definitely has smarmy tones to it. his list isn't useful to me, I regard it as a list of his friends. he is defining his social milieu. why would that interest me? I realize there's a joking quality there, what with 478 cute employees at coffee shops as vets of his lists, but the joke has gone on and on. give me his Silliman frenzy anyday. your crush list is enthusiasm for the poetry not the people, that's how I read it. and I believe in that. my links list contains strictly blogs that I read regularly, and I have given a reason why I list them. I've even dropped some that 'weren't working out'. I know very few of the people on my list. we all canonize, I don't mind that. I'm tired of social canonizing, however.
Yeah, you're right, everybody canonizes.
As for lists, I rmember when the *Village Voice*
dumped all its best columnists, and began
to consist mostly of advertising, someone sent
in a letter and said that the Village Voice didn't
expect to receive a Pulitzer Prize for listings,
did it?
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