[New-Poetry] Re: Poetry Blogs

[Skip Fox]

Off topic of blogs and not against Bob, but there's a minor point I think
worth bringing up, and one I love to make to students. If you "keep a
journal," you tend to filter many things out of it (grocery lists, license
numbers of reckless drivers, doodling with words, whatever . . . some of
which may have turned into something fruitful). But if you have a "notebook"
which you write in just as regularly as if you "kept it," whatever that
means, anything visual (and some things otherwise) might go in and prove
fruitful.

Limitations are part of the "box" we might be in. And I think that there is
much that goes unconsidered because of resulting narrowness.(Have you ever
noticed how many times people who claim to write everything they know
actually have committee meetings or television in their poems?) So I try
eliminate any such limitations I might, and writing in a "notebook" I think
helps me in that.

(Once I published a poem without words titled "Fuckers" which consisted of
14 license plates of people who cut me off in traffic. If you agree that "1"
and "7" are slant rhymes, and "X" and "6" rhyme, it was an Italian sonnet.
I'm not claiming _that_ was one of the fruitful products of "notebook"
writing. As a side note of a side note, I told Christian Bok about that poem
when he was here this spring and he wanted a copy to use in his teaching.
Hmmm.)

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] On Behalf Of Bob Grumman
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 8:30 PM
To: NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News &Views
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry Blogs



>I shouldn't generalize. I've always found myself getting in the way when 
> I tried to keep a journal.
> 
> What I do keep is sketchbooks. And I'm as likely to put words in them as 
> pictures. Does that count?

As long as you don't put them together.

--Bob


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