It may seem paradoxical, but I was pleased to see so many people make use of the comments box to inform me that my reading of Evie Shockley was deficient. Not that anybody persuaded me, exactly – I have the book & I don’t see anything in there that stands up to any of the other readers I saw/heard that day – but sometimes the map is not the territory & there may be more than goes on between the pages of the Carolina Wren Press volume. In any event, I duly noted that Shockley’s advocates don’t all share the same aesthetic – so it wasn’t just that I upset the conservative poets – and the replies very much had the feel of members of her community speaking up. Citing specifics, in fact, not just advising me that my noggin was up my derriere. Those are all good things, and I will remember to take a closer look at her work when I come across it again in the future.

 

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There still may be a dead link or two – by which I mean nothing posted in the past three months – on the blogroll to the left, but I should note that “Miss Boynton” – who appears not to be a Boynton & may not even be a miss – was the blog that pushed the roll to the 500 mark last Thursday. Those devoted to poetry make up about 90 percent of the list & half of the rest are related at least obliquely to writing. If the goal is to create a public sphere in which poets can take their work, & that of others, seriously, then it’s no contest – poetry wins.