My latest muse-avoidance technique is blog-hopping. You know, skipping from one blog to another on those seductive little links, each one a small step over the edge into the unknown, a present begging to be unwrapped. I've become fascinated by a blog's blogroll, that side-ladder of possibilities, each rung a leap into a separate distinct entire universe, all coexisting, many of them linked to each other in necklaces of connection. String Theory in action.
So I've been bagging a few writerly blogs of my own. (Well-written ones, of course). Rather than merely run the list, I'll try to introduce some of them as I go along, kinda like the notes scientists use to describe their captured quarry.
One of the best spots to start, kind of a 6-degrees-from-anyone spot, is
Paul Lisicky's blog. First of all, he posts about his own travels and writing life, puts up poems, photos, fabulous quotes from what he's reading (he reads
a lot), etc. The usual what-have-you of blogs, perhaps, but done well. He's also the author of two books, "Lawn Boy" and "Famous Builders" and teaches and reads, like, all over. I first met him when he taught at Antioch LA a few years ago (5?) and then again at Napa Valley Writers Conference last summer. I've always enjoyed his poetic prose and hands-on workshops. Anyway, you can get his full Monty (figuratively speaking) from his blog and also visit his eclectic blogroll, rife with fascinating blogs, which are, in turn, linked to other fascinating blogs, linked to...etc. It's a serially opening flower, a lotus blossom, a quagmire. The web-thing. And as great a way to meet other writers as I know.
And from there, I went to
Avoiding the Muse, written by C.Dale Young, a poet, teacher, editor and doctor in San Francisco (I think this means you can do it all), a treasure-trove of riches, which led me to
Luna which isn't a blog so much as a Journal of Poetry and Translation, with widely spaced postings, but! it hosts a tidy collection of links to
other journals. For those who are submitting, it's a compact resource of journals. As opposed to those monstrous, every-journal-known-to-humankind sorts of lists that are just too overwhelming to comprehend or wade through. And so you don't.
I lost track of how I got to
bookeywookey, but does it matter what steps I take? I put the shortcut up. Perhaps from
Mark Doty's excellent blog. And there I will leave you, friends, in the hands of a poet. Where else would one want to be?
