Poetry Blogging: How diaries replaced poetry

Mea Culpa: I have been writing entries on this ‘poetry blog’ although I prefer writing blog as a nomenclature since 2007 and have posted approximately 200 posts in that time. I know exactly because a month ago I managed to almost destroy it all by a misuse of the wordpress platform. I managed to recover all of it eventually and have made copies as backup since. Indeed even the rather unreliable substack platform acts as a backup in some cases.

It is from substack that I received a blog post this morning about blog posts. A little cannibalistic but that where we are now. In fact the post actually a roundup of blog posts the blog poster liked from a portal designed by a blog poster to publicise other people’s poetry blogging…..far from being Simulacra we have entered a full on hall of mirrors where every whim and self-regarding reflection splinters into a thousand more which shadow other’s thoughts. More a Kaleidoscopic dance of selves.

The poster seems genuine although posting snow that looks like angels not going to get into my top ten memes. However what is interesting is his selection (all links below so you can verify I not making this all up) which vaguely around theme of a new moon.

Firstly the gender split 90% women 10% men I then checked if this reflected in the original Network selection and it isn’t. The reason on delving deeper is probably that the solipistic and self-referential nature of the posts. Almost all mention ‘FEELING’ somewhere and almost all are diaristic with a couple of notable and hence significantly better exceptions. Karen Solie who selected is a poet and she writes about Gaston Bachelard which stands out amongst the diary entries and whining… so too does Robert McLennan who actually reads poetry then writes about ( almost an exception here). As for the rest well anything but and mostly about there own selves and how they feeling……….

Winner of the solipistic award goes to the indefatigible Wendy Pratt who as damn near to a fake poet as I ever seen in fact I sure she uses AI to come up with the showers of rubbish like this..she needed a robot helper for sure whilst staring into the abyss no doubt.

This is what we do. We push on, push forward, we keep writing and refining and reaching out into the dark. We keep throwing our work into the abyss, and we keep the blind faith of our tenacity. One word at a time, one submission at a time.

Fucking hell what a load of utter tosh…I not singling Pratt out as female or post trauma etc etc I selected because fucking awful.

Wendy Pratt, The awful abyss into which you throw your years of work

That at least home grown drivel the stateside entries tended to reflect real world (ICE) but managed to turn into totally ineffective poetry which somehow turned the original horror into a writing prompt. Well done.

Is that worse than this kind of diary entry? Different authors but frankly hard to tell it therapy/workshop/writing…

It’s 5:00 pm, and there’s still pink light making the rising clouds of steam blush in the distance beyond our windows, and turning the glass and steel surfaces into mirrors. We’ve noticed, just this week, that the days really do seem to be getting longer — and what a welcome thing that is. Winter will last two more months up here, but there will be more bright days like this one from now on.

We’ve had quite a bit of snow and cold in Chicago so far, which feels unduly personal when the digital world feels so jagged and depressing.

Special mention for a entitled rich Brit with no danger of ever being arrested..unless it a crime to write shit like this.. Speaking as a builder’s son from the working-class town below your beloved Oxford where you churn out copies of Harry Potter. A double-headed reading of Pratt and Pullmann be something else…

Poetry is not a fancy way
of giving you information;
it’s an incantation.
It is actually a magic spell.
It changes things; it changes you.
—Philip Pullman

Poetry Blogs are a stupid waste of time and are fuelling a stupid waste of time industry of narcististic writers echoing each others ‘concerns’ from nice pretty front rooms whilst outside the cities burn.

The bodies lie untended……total avoidance of reality…..a feelgood industry nothing more.

Time it was called out. As for Moons and Wolves…

I will google how many poetry (allegedly) books have one or both in title I lay good money on it being more than you might think. it like being trapped in a Bookseller AGM. ‘Well this year our representatives mentioned moons and wolves 5000 times and this shows exponential growth year on year”. remember that ‘Moons and Wolves’!

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/1573-trend-alert-the-rise-of-wolves-in-recent-book-titles