Jack Kimball writes well of the current temperature of the poetry world and its subsistence blogs, here. the zest seems to have passed, drained elsewhere. as in Facebook, Twitter, I don't know. the Poetics list, and others, too, were lively, in their day. lo 10 years ago or so, I came on board this internet, greeted by a network of forces that I had been abstracted from. there was contact with other poets, that is, and it grew my own work immeasurably. I was vitalized by the Poetics list then, and Subpoetics, and some few other lists. they were places of energy. the old neighbourhoods have changed and right now, it feels like nothing has replaced what there was. I guess there's a whiff of nostalgia here. I do not think that blogs have lost their utility, as singular fronts and as community nodes. my own usage has skidded some recently. I always consider this blog a Poetry blog, even tho my posts are often 'off topic'. I associate everything that I write here with poetics, and if you have a moment (make that a few moments), I could explain. not right now, tho. my reading has not been poetry overmuch of late, tho I have just brought down John Milton from the shelf (Paradise Lost, perhaps), having read a Cromwell bio. and I am reading Carl Sauer's 17th Century North America, and been listening to Olson lectures, namely the Vancouver reading (remember when poetry could be exciting???). if we really are a community, then we need to kick out the jams. we are drifting, right now.