Gimme Some!

I haven't been paying much attention to the Writers Guild strike, partly because I can't imagine a world where poets would strike and Entertainment Weekly would write cover stories on it. Also, I just am a little wary when people who are paid well and have dream jobs ask for more. (Although producers feigning poverty is pretty laughable too.) I am simply dreading the moment when the episodes run out and I am forced to watch drivel or perhaps write more.

However, this opinion piece put the issue into perspective for me. The author of this NY Times article works in the internet content industry and asks some good questions. Most importantly, is it feasible to charge for content on the internet? Or is it soley going to be an advertisement driven medium?

I think its interesting that the WGA is striking on this issue, since they develop content for one medium (film/television) and it ends up on another (DVD and internet.) Does that change the nature of the value for the viewer? We already get it for "free" on TV, and by free we mean we have to watch ridiculous commercials and pay for cable if we want clear reception. But, we don't pay the writers of Lost directly for their work. Would it be natural to pay for it online? We already pay for it directly on DVD, thereby endangering future syndication revenue for writers. I also wonder what this means for user produced content like blogs, since those tend to be a low paying enterprise, unless you write about rehabbing celebrities.

It's an interesting issue and this article is the first time I've seen it articulated in a way that makes it understandable for unpaid writers like me.

Nonsensical Word Soup

A while ago, my brother turned me on to a sight called blather. It's a weird site, but extremely fun to play around with. If you liked Choose Your Own Adventure books or MadLibs pads when you were a kid, then this may be the sight for you. Imagine that the Choose Your Own adventure books were collaboratively written by Mallarme and a stoned high school student and then you could be close.

The premise is pretty simple. The site leads you to a randomly generated word and that word has a collaborative poem written on it. It could be 5 lines it could be 55 lines, you'll never know. Almost every word in the poem is linked to a page with that name, where another collaborative poem was written. You can add a line to any poem that you like, and the program automatically links the individual words to the pages.

Overall, this is very addictive. I will say that some of the pages are very slow loading and I was disappointed to realize that "acid" had the most lines. *Sigh.*

So I'm New to This iTunes Thing...

...having just purchased an iPod a month or so ago. (I used a different company's mp3 player until it died.) I typed "poetry" into the podcast directory, and found the coolest video! Of course, I can't figure out how to post it on this blog, so instead I'll just describe it and strongly recommend it. You Internet-savvy folks will surely be able to find it.

The podcast is called "National Champion Performance Poets" and the episode is called "Bao Phi, Doug Kearney, and William Harris 2002 NPS Finals Showcase." The three artists, two poet/speakers and one beat boxer, performed a poem with the refrain "We meet at the crossroads of convenience stores, in a galaxy of bullet proof glass, chanting a battle hymn of broken English." It is a long poem exploring the stereotypes of African Americans and Asian Americans and it is powerful!

I am proud to note that two of the performers are from Minneapolis. Bao Phi is a well-known spoken word poet who is based in Minneapolis. The beat boxer, William Harris, is also from Minneapolis.

Read Books & Save Trees

I just learned of an interesting company called Eco-Libris. Eco-Libris works like a carbon offsetting company. But rather than neutralizing your carbon footprint through planting trees, Eco-Libris neutralizes your paper usage from your book buying habit. See, publishing companies often use virgin paper for books, which causes deforestation. (Also, paper production companies can be incredibly huge polluters, another environmental concern.) At Eco-Libris' site, you can pay $10 to plant ten trees, to offset the paper usage of 10 new books. The company works with a couple of non-profit planting partners to get the environmental action done. They are like middlemen in the process, connecting readers to eco-organizations.

When I look around my house, I see hundreds of books -- and therefore hundreds of trees that have been chopped down to print those books. Honestly, I've never thought of the environmental impact of my book buying addiction. I like books and I like the ideas that they transmit. This site opened my eyes to another aspect of my environmental imapct on the world, and it isn't pretty. Interestingly enough, even though they are a for-profit company, Eco-Libris' blog promotes other ways to limit your paper usage while still enjoying books.

Would You Like A Scone With Your Book Review?

Whenever there's a new movement in writing, the establishment gets scared. Actually, whenever there's a new movement in human community, the establishment gets scared, but let's stick with writing for now. I've just read an article that sounds like the dying battle cry for "the old way of doing things" in journalism and writing.

This article from the LA Times is infuriating. The author, Richard Schickel, attacks the rise in literary blogging, specifically book reviewing online. I believe this is in response to an article from a few weeks ago on the rise of book review blogs. He says that a rise to a democratic reviewing of books will lead to the degradation of quality in book reviewing as an art. He claims that book reviewers need to be educated in literary history, criticism, and the author's oeuvre of work. He picks specifically on a reviewing blogger who is also a car parts salesman.

Now, I agree that book reviewers should be knowledgeable and educated. But just because the book reviewer doesn't publish in the New York Times, doesn't mean that he or she is uneducated in the literary arts. I would like to remind the author of the scores of writer who must work another job to support their art. (Hmmm, the author of 9 to 5 Poet and the spouse of a fledgling book reviewer is a little biased in this regard.) Most people who get undergraduate and graduate degrees in English do not necessarily walk off into the sunset to write beautiful reviews for famous newspapers. We teach at community colleges, work at retail emporiums, and are no less dedicated to the literary arts than someone who has more opportunities.

When Mr. Schickel writes lines like, "a purely 'democratic literary landscape' is truly a wasteland, without standards, without maps, without oases of intelligence or delight," he seems just a bit elitist, which is his whole point. But is this truly an elitism of quality or of social standing?

MySpace Saves Bookstores

According to this article from Publisher's Weekly, the social networking site MySpace has helped save a Chicago institution from closing.

Women & Children First Bookstore, a 28 year old feminist bookstore in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, used their MySpace page to discuss their financial difficulties with their patrons and friends. Even though W&CF is such a popular bookstore, their financial difficulties are a direct result of people buying books elsewhere. In fact many indie bookstores (and big box bookstores) are suffering, due to the widespread popularity of Amazon.com, among other things. The owners of W&CF posted this missive in their blog, to an overwhelmingly positive response. Their sales, both in store and online, improved considerably within a weekend.

Personally, I think it would be a shame if W&CF closed down. When I was in college, I drove down to Chicago to see Alice Walker read from her book on female genital mutilation in Africa. I was packed into this little tiny bookstore with over a hundred other people, and I got to meet Walker face to face. Without bookstores like Women & Children First to support them, independent and interesting writers may not have a chance to promote their work.

Enough About Me, Let's Talk About You...What Do You Think of Me?

In the past two days, I've learned about 2 websites that both compel and repel me. (And I heard about them both on MPR!)

The first is called Twitter, which is an instant messaging site -- sort of. Members of this site leave messages for their Twitter friends about what they are doing that second. The members only have about 140 characters to describe their activities. You can access it from any wireless device or just log on.

The second is called Future Me and it takes the idea of time capsules into email. On Future Me, you can send your future self a letter from your past (or current) self. Still with me? You have to pick a day at least 30 days and no more than 50 years in the future. Then, it will be emailed to you. Any person can also read other people's public Future Me letters, and they range from the banal to touching to mysterious to funny and depressing. Readers can also rate the letters. The more I read these letters, the more intrigued I get.

All of this makes me wonder 2 things. First, is this any different than creative writing? Obviously, I would call blogging creative writing, and this seems to be an extension of blogging in its own way. And you can say that blogging is an extension of confessional writing, poetry and journals. So, to make a logical leap, can we go from Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and May Sarton to Future Me letters and blurbing about yourself? Is this the new wave of poetry and journal writing, stripped bare for the public for all to see?

Second, why are we so obsessed with ourselves? I know, I know, Time Magazine asked this question in a really didactic and old-fogey way a couple of months ago. But this obsession with ourselves is starting to weird me out. (She says on her blog.) The more that I think about this though, the more I wonder if this is our obsession with ourselves or an obsession with each other. While reading the Future Me letters, I was more interested in finding out who these people were and what their goals were. I wasn't as concerned with what I would say, but what has already been said.

All of this leads, of course, to the future of this type of writing. Will it die out or will it grow? Will we be blogging and blurbing and contacting ourselves in the future forever? Will it turn into a meta experience where we describe the act of blurbing while blurbing and read other people's blurb experience? I think we're already on the way to that, and I don't know what that means for us as a culture.

Poetry of the Future?

Way back in the day, Walt Whitman wrote his polemic on what he feels poetry will be in the future. He wanted it out of the drawing room and into the wilderness. He wanted it to be of the people and for the people. He wanted it to represent life. That was good for the end of the nineteenth century. But what about the end of the twentieth century, beginning of the twenty first century?

One of my classmates from my online teaching literacy class sent us a link to a web journal based on teaching media literacy in the class room, called Kairos. Within an issue from 1999, they have a hypertext poetry project by Cheryl Ball. It is a series of poems linked through images. You click on the images in order to progress the poem. You can, if you choose, press them in any order and create new poems.

When I was in grad school, we had to read Marshall McLuhan and I was all about the changing of media to fit the message. But seeing this little early glimpse into a web poetry project, I wonder if there is a new genre out there that I have missed out on. Surely, we have enough technology to create truly web interactive poetry in a way that can be artistically interesting and unique.

So I did a little researching. Apparently, the term hypertext poetry is passe. It is E-Poetry now. Anyway, there is an E-Poetry Festival, this year in France. There is an E-Poetry Center out of SUNY Buffalo. I am going to continue to research, because for me, this helps me to see the possibilities in what I write.

Public Domain on the Web

I just discovered this great site. It's an organization called LibriVox. It's goal is to find all the public domain works and create download-able audio versions for public use. The catalog is divided by writing genre: Fiction, Non Fiction, Poetry & Dramatic Works.

Of course, I viewed the poetry section. It's a little thin, only 30 entries, but it's developing. (You can view what works are in progress.) On the first page of in-progress entries, it lists The Odyssey and the Divine Comedy. In the completed section, it does list some of my favorite old-school poets, like Blake, Coleridge, and Dickinson.

I love when technology is used for such interesting work!

Won't Somebody, Please, Think of the Books?

A couple of posts ago, I lamented library's use of technology to eradicate books. Luckily, the Library of Congress is trying to find ways to prevent the loss of knowledge through the deterioration of books and reading.

Starting in a few months, and with help from a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the LoC will begin digitizing books that are brittle and fragile, so that they will be available for future generations to read and enjoy.

I, for one, have never been a consumer of digital reading, preferring the sensory experience of curling up with a paper book. However, faced with the choice between losing precious memoirs and diaries from the Civil War or reading them on a screen, I'll choose blurry eyes and rescued narratives any day of the week.

By the way, I've spent a little time on the Library of Congress website and they are also doing some fascinating work on preserving digital content for the future. Along with this intriguing project, there is just a treasure trove of research content for those of us interested in obscure content.

Publication Opportunity for the Unpublished Masses

I found this article from my Publisher's Weekly daily email and it sounds like a fantastic opportunity.

You can go to Firstchapters.gather.com and post a first chapter of a novel for review. The website's participants will comment and review on your offering and the 5 best offerings will be reviewed by a panel of judges, for possible publication by Simon & Schuester.

Interestingly enough, Gather.com recently sparked a deal with Borders to help Borders gain customers, through promotion on Gather.com's site. So the first chapter contest includes guaranteed promotion by the #2 big box book retailer.

I was considering submitting my own chapters from my stagnating 1920's novel, but the entire book is due by February. I don't think I can finish a novel by then.

Libraries -- the New Wal-Mart?

I don't normally like to think of commerce & literature together, but they are intrinsically connected, whether we like it or not. (My husband is a former manager of a big box bookstore, so I definitely understand the connection.) As a poet especially, I know that I would never have the same financial success as, say, John Grisham or Stephen King.

However, I always thought that our libraries would be a storehouse of all works of literature, but this article from the Wall Street Journal is disturbing, to say the least. It details the use of a computer cataloging system for libraries which monitors circulation, among other things. If a book doesn't circulate within two years, it recommends permanently pulling it from the shelves.

How would students or young readers be able to rediscover writers who have fallen from favor? How would we retain our literary heritage, without the actual physical books to read? How would we be able to gain inspiration from our previous generation's work, if that work has been eradicated?

I know this is slightly hypocritical blogging about this technological change to our literary heritage, but to me it smacks much more of commercialism and pandering than opening up new avenues of expression. I shudder at the new world without complete libraries -- full of VC Andrews books and blank stares.

A Brilliant Idea -- Poetry Thursdays

My new definition of heaven -- vacation from work and new wireless internet service in our condo. I've been playing around and trying to find what other people are doing with poetry and the internet. I've found a lot of good stuff, but so far my favorite idea is Poetry Thursday.

Poetry Thursday is a collective project for poets on the web, organized by two moderators. On Mondays, the moderators post a writing exercise that is due on the following Thursday. After Thursday rolls around, people who accomplished the exercise and want to share post their results on their blog, then send the moderators the link. The moderators then post all the links and instant poetry community.

I'm going to try to start the Poetry Thursday exercise, just to get those poetry muscles working.