"Why Don't You Publish Poems Here?"

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I've had a few friends remark recently on the fact that I never publish poems here, and with the current discussion around blog publishing practice - (see Reb Livingston for a particularly interesting formulation of a different approach) - it seems like it might be a good time to talk about this. "Never publish": that is, I never publish here the poems which "really matter to me", those I'd send to journals or want to be circulated in a more permanent sense. The only thing I consider putting up which is in any way to do with my own poetry really comes under the heading of poetic parodies, jokes, imitations, manipulations; that is, pieces which are at a complete tangent to what I suppose I think of as a more "serious" writing practice.

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Which raises an interesting question for me, one which doesn't seem to have been entirely addressed in others' recent eloquent musings: namely, whether a blog might be an outlet for a very specific kind of work which, if that forum was not there, one would never share. The fleetingness of this forum, at least for me, precludes me ever putting up final versions, let alone drafts, of things which are dear to me: it seems to disappear too quickly. But then I began to wonder whether these parodies, what I consider a divergent "sub" -practice, may be mistaken for more wrought and pained-over pieces.

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So I thought today that, for once, I'd break rank with this idea and publish here a few already published poems to give some idea, for those who might come to the blog now and then but not know about the type of poems I like to write, a little sense of what this might resemble. It's just that I realized that this was sadly the case for me with some blogs that I visited regularly, which I even engaged with without entirely knowing what a particular blogger's own writing was even like! It's shameful, but honestly I think it must often be the case for a lot of us, and recently, when I have been making the effort to read a large portion of the writing of absolutely everybody whom I read regularly in a critical context, I've made some truly amazing discoveries for me about work I never even knew existed.

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So, in case anyone's got 5 minutes and is just passing through, here's two things, now that my copyright has reverted: the first was published in Fascicle (thanks Tony Tost), the second in Eratio (thanks Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino). Would be lovely to hear other peoples' thoughts and views on their own practices. (Oh, and if anyone is looking for a manuscript - how would Tony Soprano put it? - "we can talk" . . .)



within the velvet folds of light


a line *
of trees : inner
division * to the world’s adoring
grace . . . inconstancy is
no question here :
as (if) all
our light were
slept * in the velvet
folds of this most delicate
solitude . . . a winding stair : six coiled
petals : a moving sun . . . or even this : the leaves
upon the lake : the long days of endless fire
as much as the dry scrub’s calm . . .
as to be inconstant
to one’s own
Image is
as * absurd ! * as
you are it ! and no : not the roses
nor the new leaves among * the blooming
ash . . . but the simple fact that * in the final
days your skin will be * with ripe fresh
blossoms born and your concerns
like those * of the ancient ever-
moving stars : pensive
silent : far- *
off




love poem 32


worth *
are you the only * one
to my desires . . . my divine
rule : your heavens
set *
your spheres
in motion : to music’s trim mosaic . . .
a living firmament : as though no-one (else
the crystal) these hot tears to mop
your * mirror’s message . . .
yet let
the * roses
have their dew ! : our accounts all
settled * in my sadness’ favour
(with a tendency
hyperbolic) : a seed *
to your proud forest formed
an aphid * ardent
to your
orb