Today this weblog will register its 750,000^th visit. The readership here has been stable for roughly a year now, suggesting that it will reach the one million mark next February. I had not anticipated this when I started this venture, but I’ve been pleased at the result. Even more so by the quality of discourse about poetry and poetics that is taking place throughout the blogosphere on any given day. Poets using all of their critical faculties as well as all of their other senses position themselves to do their very best work, and it’s especially fortuitous when those same critical faculties don’t get sidetracked into the administrivia of university life. The great majority of poets don’t teach & aren’t students, although it’s a phase we almost all seem to go through, and one with major advantages for a time if only we don’t confuse it with the bigger picture. I know that I do my best work – writing and thinking – when challenged to do more, whatever that more might be. And I know that this weblog – raucous comments stream & all – has challenged me in ways I had not imagined when first I started it. Thank you for that.