Iain Marshall wrote a
great blog post discussing the recent shutdown of comment threads on
Ron Silliman's blog as well as on
The Harriet Blog a few months ago.
This is a topic that Marshall and I (and plenty o' other people) have been discussing lately since it is quite a big blow to take away a life force for poets, when poets are already struggling for cohesion and satisfying discourse. I agree with a lot of what Marshall has to say about how it's not unprecedented, nor unnecessary what Silliman has done, though it certainly is unfortunate.
It's also encouraging for me to notice that The Sexy Poets are yet to be cursed with a lot of the problems the online-world-o-poetry is experiencing. Certainly we're still a baby as far as communities go, and maybe it'll just take a bit before the milk sours. However I enjoy seeing time and time again such varied voices and poetics being put on display at SexPo readings, and people ending up having great discussions with people they disagree with. I've certainly received negative reviews about people who have read, and about my own stuff, but it's never been in the spirit of trying to prove oneself or shut down other voices.
I really do want to work on making Ypsilanti a place where people can feel free and enervated to discuss what they want poetry to be, and maybe what they think it should be, and be able to have reasonable and interesting arguments and ideas for their beliefs.
And feel free to use this blog and comment threads for your opinions. I've never had problems with any of you, so by all means, use it for discussion.
Anyhow, scroll back up and click on the link for Marshall's blog, unless you opened it in a different tab already.
-Theresa
