Dear Eyewearers, in order to determine how often I should update my blog, which has become a hungry mouth to feed (with content), it would be very useful if you could vote in the poll. Basically, if it turns out almost no one really visits all that often, I'll wind things down soon. I have several big projects on the go, and am finding it more and more time consuming to keep Eyewear state-of-the-art.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....
Comments
Isn't it more traditional simply to install a counter to surveil yr flock (www.statcounter.com is v. simple)? Cf. Tea:
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In 2006 you wrote a brilliant blog-review on "Modern Times" by Bob Dylan.
It would be great if you wrote something now on his latest "Together Through Life" which has been released today and is stunning for more than one unexpected reason...
Best wishes, Davide
Surely a writer with compassion has a compassionate audience?
as a recent discoverer of Eyewear, I like having a new (to me) blog to check out. I check in a couple times a week; on my own blog I've more or less dropped to once a week posts, or about four a month. Obviously you'd have to be more frequent if you want to write about current matters.
Whatever you decide, I hope it keeps running. And feel free to send along books to review, to take off some of the onus of having to write content.
I also keep my eye on Eyewear via Google 'following' mechanism - so I only tend to visit as regularly as new items are posted. Frequency isn't really an issue for me. I describe my own blog as intermittent - occasional gluts of regular posts between other, fallow periods. I know it's not ideal, but there's no law that says a blog MUST be updated very regularly. I like what you've done here - the tone / mix of content / subjectivity and objectivity. Be a shame to see it wind down totally.
Ever think of spreading the load - bringing in other mods/eds ? Emerging with another existing 'magblog'? Eyewear as a regular 'feature column' elsewhere?
I like the blog though and will probably check back soon - I will also check out this google reader several have mentioned.
Thanks!