6 OCT 05
dear N,
I guess I started the blog as an experiment, and almost as a secret from myself. I'd been reading blogs, mostly poetry-related, for a year or 2, and became intrigued by the form (what makes a blog a blog). I wanted to have a site up when my chapbook came out, and in the back of my mind I wondered if I'd try blogging too.
I knew it was a bad idea. I can't keep a diary for 2 weeks straight, and am (as you know) an erratic correspondent ("nothing happens much and when it does I don't want to talk about it"). For some reason, that didn't stop me. Thinking of your question "What's it for?"--I'm so used to following my work around, needing to trust it, doing things without knowing why (the artist's lot), I don't think I asked myself that question until I was already in.
Then I exchanged some emails with Anne Boyer and Laura Carter on the subject "Why blog?" (I'd written to Laura when she closed her blog-shop temporarily, and to Anne about viewing the blog as art--I'll get back to this). Soon after, Reb Livingston posted a list of Ways a Writer Can Make Use of Blogging. I related to those--especially the desire for community--and to Shanna's comment: "It's just like putting up a sign...'hey, I'm over here and some of my stuff is over there.'" The stuff (bio, poems, book, scheduled readings, audio) would be at the website, the person would be at the blog. Or maybe not the person but the character created by the person. The greeter. The ambassador.
Well okay, more on this later. Time to have some dinner, the lost meal. I laughed at your description of what's on your fridge. We cleaned everything off of ours the other night--we start over when a big job gets finished. So right now there's only a newly printed, clean October calendar, a bunch of science-catalog disc magnets, and a lone 3x5 card that says "Sometimes I forget I'm as good as Ben Franklin" (which might have some bearing on our topic).
soon,
k
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