I can't switch to Beta Blogger, tho I guess I want to, which means that I officially have done a fair amount of blogging. I don't like the verb blog, because it suggests a usage that is not necessarily so. I mean, a blog is a means of transmission. if one's work appears in a magazine, is one magazining? well yeah, but what's the dillio? I cede to the idea of a community of bloggers, but I signed nothing with blood, and I doubt others have either. so no need for hyperactivation on that point. I think of Tributary as a poetry blog, but how do I fit shopping tours and journalistic dailiness into that idea? super easy is how. you know the back cover of Lunch Poems from City Lights. evoking a picture of O'Hara bopping around and, you know, limning lines on handy Olivettis. poetry can be much of goings on, inside and out. it's a cheesy view to see them strictly as rampant careerism. that works into a definition of careerism as any effort whatsoever to broadcast one's work and one's thinking. that's up there with Kerouac's self-ultimate, and wasn't he a kid at the time? I like to sit at the computer when I can and language what's recent, what's around, what's tipping the current scale somehow. I specifically treat myself to slang, or the adventurously non-standard, or any other way to surprise myself, and possibly the Reader. that's an exercise, exercise is good. I look forward to new entries at all the blogs to the right, and others as well. I got on the Poetics list 7 years ago, when I pretty much rebegan writing poetry. having isolated myself from what will have to be called the poetry community (but not from the writing itself), I found the Poetics list inspiring for having others yapping in a daily way about poetry. the list got over-managed to the point that it has little apparent life. plus people never seemed to catch on to how awkward to the point of stupid the group soliloqiues of internet "discussion" can be. a very weakness of blogs is just that yelling over the transom at the blog next door that goes on. what's interesting is the personal ruminations in patches of one's own idiom. the conscious and unconscious effort to create a vital language space.