> I'm sure I've
> written several books-worth of prose in poetryetc alone; probably very
> bad and unreadable books, but nevertheless it does sometimes feel like
> an expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Somehow the ability to
> natter fluently in an electronic forum seems like a poor substitute
> for, say, the completion of that PhD thesis I was going to write
> (*cough*). Maybe we should have a poetryetc project where everyone
> just disconnects for a month and tries to write a few short stories,
> critical articles, sonnet sequences or whatever instead - then we all
> reconnect a month later, and see what we've got...
Sometimes - I, too - have these thoughts. Or, wistfully, that some great
editors in the sky, some day hence, will carefully cull the best of
poetryetc into a series of printed volumes on this and that.
No, I suspect each of us has to bite our own editorial bullet and shape what
we will. Otherwise, interesting dialogs end up primarily with a yield cosmic
smoke. Le mot juste becomes les mots bye bye, Speaking of which it is time
to get to real work.
(Though, I should admit, a few pieces I have written on lists have gone into
publication - yes, there are still some real, acquisitive editors out there
with an eye for interesting stuff that comes from improvising and writing
'on list.')
|