Blogs About Poetry
Good and Happy's post today quotes a poem by J. V. Cunningham "on the fading of ambition, not to be confused with moral or artistic collapse":
How well I understand that! Is it just the particularity of my circumstances -- of having tried for and almost established a public career, only to see it dwindle away -- or is it a predictable developmental change of middle age? Both, perhaps. I think there are artists much more successful than I who secretly feel a waning of appetite for the battlegrounds of creation and promotion -- who don't want to go out on the next book tour but woujld much rather sit home and write sonnets -- or blog posts.
Meanwhile, Good and Happy's post sent me to Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium, an intellectually engaging blog concentrating on poetry and poetry criticism from the standpoint of a sophisticated practitioner who gave up "the electric kool-aid of free verse" for the vintage wine of traditional forms. One of the greast joys of blogging, for me, is that I get to know people like this: a whie-beared software developer and mandolin player who writes, and writes about, poetry on a high level, while simultaneously drawing back a bit of the curtain on a life that's as busy and tangled as yours or mine. His book, 44 SONNETS, is for sale on his site, and a review at 2blowhards (another fine blog revealed for me on today's trail)makes me want to buy it. (Read the Snier sonnet, "The Fall," quoted in its enttirety in the review.)
Mike Snider is now on my blogroll. Another terrific poetry criticism site I've blogrolled recently is David Leftwich's Eclectic Refrigerator. David is a passionate amateur who spares me the trouble of having to discover new examples of poetry, jazz, dance, and other arts on my own. All I have to do is click on his site and find out what poets to read and what jazz CDs to listen to.
It's all part of our expanding world.
How time reverses
The proud in heart!
I now make verses
Who aimed at art.
How well I understand that! Is it just the particularity of my circumstances -- of having tried for and almost established a public career, only to see it dwindle away -- or is it a predictable developmental change of middle age? Both, perhaps. I think there are artists much more successful than I who secretly feel a waning of appetite for the battlegrounds of creation and promotion -- who don't want to go out on the next book tour but woujld much rather sit home and write sonnets -- or blog posts.
Meanwhile, Good and Happy's post sent me to Mike Snider's Formal Blog and Sonnetarium, an intellectually engaging blog concentrating on poetry and poetry criticism from the standpoint of a sophisticated practitioner who gave up "the electric kool-aid of free verse" for the vintage wine of traditional forms. One of the greast joys of blogging, for me, is that I get to know people like this: a whie-beared software developer and mandolin player who writes, and writes about, poetry on a high level, while simultaneously drawing back a bit of the curtain on a life that's as busy and tangled as yours or mine. His book, 44 SONNETS, is for sale on his site, and a review at 2blowhards (another fine blog revealed for me on today's trail)makes me want to buy it. (Read the Snier sonnet, "The Fall," quoted in its enttirety in the review.)
Mike Snider is now on my blogroll. Another terrific poetry criticism site I've blogrolled recently is David Leftwich's Eclectic Refrigerator. David is a passionate amateur who spares me the trouble of having to discover new examples of poetry, jazz, dance, and other arts on my own. All I have to do is click on his site and find out what poets to read and what jazz CDs to listen to.
It's all part of our expanding world.
posted by Richard Lawrence Cohen at 9:28 AM
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