I've always been the sort of creator that puts it all out there. At one time, I was self-conscious about this. I had a poetry website from the time I first started publishing. It seemed important to have a web central for the work that was just starting to crop up in online journals. I think back on that time as exhilarating--the first time I got real-time engagement with work. The online poetry community felt much smaller and perhaps it was..but so many folks took the time to write really nice messages to me. It was the first time I really felt like a writer and it encouraged me to write and submit more.
This was before "social media" was a thing, but instead we connected via the lit journals, via listservs and discussion boards. In 2001, I created a website with Angelfire, which was surprisingly simple. (the main landing page of my website s still hosted there, as is dgp, though both now take you to blogger sites.) Over the years, I actually managed to tweak the design of pretty basic templates until I had something I liked. It's hoot to go back in the internet archive and see what the pages looked like over the years, what my tastes and visual inspos were. It was followed by a blog later--first on xanga in 2003, where I met some of the folks I am still poetry friends with. Then on blogger in 2005 and still going strong.
Both venues and their content seemed to vascillate between diary-like content and the sort of stuff you use social media for now--publication announcements, recommendations, memes, links to cool things. I also used to post a lot of drafts, some of which remain. (and some of which exist nowhere else.) Probably from about 2005-2009, blogs were the center of my online lit community for, full of comments and interractions (good and bad) that dwindled once writers began to move to facebook for such things. I joined Facebook in 2009 and that soon became the way you connected with other writers, while the blogs sort of dwindled down to the folks, like me, who still loved long-form content too much to give it up. But probably now and for the past decade, the blog feels like someone playing a record in space. You know it's making music and broadcasting, but aren't quite sure if it's reaching anyone's ears. And maybe it just feels that way because we're now trained to expect more interaction when we post things..a like or comment or a heart. Proof that someone at least heard us.
But then again, writing might be a little like this itself. You write a book, you publish a poem, and it blasts off into the universe, and only occasionally an echo comes back. Someone writes a review or says a kind something that makes your heart soar, You click with an editor or a something goes over really well at a reading. For poetry, it stills feels like there is a lot more silence than there is echo. But then of course, how can it be any other way? Especially when you are but one record player in a sea of record players, all playing their own songs. It is, at the same tie absolute stillness and absolute chaos. But as readers, we are the ones out there in space trying to listen and there is not only the record players, but all the other space junk. I feel the junk lately--some of it good--some of it good, some of it terrible, some of it just a hum, but ultimately distracting.
Until this pandemic, I was really good about staying focused on the center of things. The center of who I was--what was important--the rest of which revolved around that center. But it's taken a bit of time to get back to being moored, and I'm not sure I'm even there yet. Some days I am there--but some days are lost in horrifying headlines and growing sense of doom that makes caring about writing or art impossible. Also reading impossible, and even caring about poetry related things at all. But I try to make use of the good days. This week was eaten up by library work in long stretches--a presentation to other librarians about our virtual exhibits and a grant proposal deadline--but today I woke up determined to spend it writing, or working on writing related things at least since it's technically the weekend (though what is a weekend anymore?) While I was in bed and fighting the urge to check facebook or the local news for the latest terrible statistics and alarming headlines, I started plotting a new project instead.
A couple years back I started a Tiny Letter, at the time for sending out little missives of work. I "published" off the bulk of two different series that way--exquisite damage and swallow--and collected a small group of subscribers. Though not everyone read everything that came into their inboxes, some did. I also enjoyed the ones I subscribed to--a mix of newsletters and writing samples and postcards from other writers delivered virtually. And while the same info sometimes was available elsewhere--on facebook, on twitter, on author websites--it was nice that it felt a little special. It also felt like a moment of stillness. The time it took to open an e-mail and peruse, that was different than scrolling past something in a feed.
So it occurred to me what if I revived the Tiny Letter, not just as a news letter of what is happening or what I'm working on, but also as a way to share special things--little electronic projects and e-zines, if not totally exclusively, then in advance. Sampled poems from what I'm working on not posted elsewhere. Or also offer special little collage images and printables. I have the books & objects subscription. but that costs money, something none of us seems to have a lot of these days, so this would be free to whoever wants to join to receive it in their inboxes (monthly I'm thinking?) I like the idea of calling it PAPER BOAT, because it feels like something carefully crafted and set off in the water every month and on it's way to you. Something tangible and intentional (well as tangible as something electronically delivered can be.)
Today, I'll finish this post then I'll spend some time formatting the first one and making the webpage for people to join. It's a scary world and a cloudy day that already feels a little sticky and storm swollen, but I have coffee and a laptop and lots of poems and pictures. So I'm feeling a little better able to focus today on the center, that for me anyway, holds it all together.
