Blogs and Wikis write-up

This is an assignment for my blogs and wikis class. It's a survey of my progress and development as a poet, a photographer and a blogger.

I feel that I need to do the write up on my blog rather than on the wiki because the project is on the blog. It only makes sense. The medium of composition is fundamental to the project and to review it in some other fashion makes no sense. Anyway, I was planning on doing a review of my blog at the six month point--highlighting some of my better posts--so I figured I could just do that now. After all, I'm less than a month away from the six month birthday of Jones Poems.

One major issue of my blog is poem persona confusion. This discussion topic comes up frequently. Usually, I'm thinking about it in relation to a poem I've written, so I will make a comment. Then other people will comment about my comment. In some cases my readers agree that it's frusturating that readers assume a poem is a lyrical memoir, yet in other cases I feel like people are saddened by the thought that a poem isn't something that happened in the real world. Perhaps that stems from the assumptions about poets (that poets are dreamers who can see deeply into the things of this world.

Another huge issue (perhaps even bigger than poem persona confusion) is the intersection of words with images. Some of the strongest poems I've written this semester are weak or don't make sense without their partner photo. The most striking example of this is sunday school. First of all, I love this poem because it communicates something--perhaps how I feel about religion, perhaps how I want to feel about religion, perhaps what those around me feel about religion. But more than that, I've put meaning into an image. Separately, the photo and the poem wouldn't mean as much as they do together. The photo probably wouldn't evoke the emotions it does without the poem to explain the deeper meaning within the photo. The photo would have a different focus. And without the photo the poem would lack its vividness. They are a unit. They are one piece of art. I also enjoyed the content comments on this poem.

I find having content comments fascinating. missing the snow is a poem that made me marvel at the comments (particularly Jessie's comment). Because I want readers to make their own meanings, I often use ambiguious second person pronouns, which can lead to all kinds of wonderful and fascinating trouble. I wrote this poem with something else in mind; this poem started with a thought rather than a photo. As I browsed my pictures for a compatible photo, I found this one, the one with the snow. Originally, there was no winter in my poem, but it fit my secret "you" very well, so I used the photo even though I'd already used it for a previous poem.

I do have a poem that troubles me. I wrote it last week--my link poem. I love the idea of the poem--chasing endless meaning through an endless web of reading and meaningmaking--but I don't like the way I had to go about illustrating it. Why? This idea is timeless. We can never escape that we cannot know everything, that one thought will always lead us to another thought (sometimes old, sometimes new). But this poem will die. The links will probably die as their creators get bored with them or create better sites. Beyond that, this poem is trapped in my blog. The photopoems I could print in a book without separating the marriage between poem and image. But I cannot put the link poem in a book. How do I send readers on an infinite mental journey in print without forcing them to "wander" where I want them to. A book author is a dictator. She forces the reader to move where she wants them to. The internet is different. A webwriter can set up a series of links, but he cannot force the reader to examine all of them. There is so much to see and do online that any expectation of that sort would be absurd. "hypertextual life" plays with this. I want the readers of this poem to get distracted and wander off (I hope they come back).

I also got some good comments off of the StudioTours. "My first impression of Jones Poems, from the color of her template, is that it is very serious, and that the author is deep in thought. I find myself wanting to tiptoe so I don't disturb her creative process." I really like this quote. I kind of feel like this when I go to Jones Poems too. It's a calm place. I don't really have that many angry poems. There is anger in some of my poems ("sunday school" and "learning the art of sleeping around") but it's not an overt anger. It lurks quietly under the surface, waiting for an explosion which might never come.

Sandi had interesting and useful things to say about my grammar and mechanics as well: "Another interesting point in Tiffany's blog is that she doesn't capitalize titles, or beginnings of lines in her poetry. In fact, the only places she uses capitalization is in her name, and any other time that she posts her observations. Is her lack of uniformity intentional? Is is a lack of conformity to grammatical rules? Or maybe there really aren't any rules when it comes to art?" (I wish I could block quote that.) I would like to address my lack of capitalization because there is a reason that I do it. Capitalization and punctuation are helpful in clear prose. If I'm analyzing something, the most effective way to communicate my analysis is through the use of proper writing conventions. Poetry is different, though. As far as capitalization is concerned, I usually like to save it up--use it when it's really important. I also feel that the lack of punctuation (or even stanza breaks) can communicate my meaning most effectively.

As I was looking for a poem of mine with conventional or mostly conventional punctuation, I was less successful than I'd initially imagined. I found this narrative poem. I don't usually write narrative poems because I feel like they give readers the answer. When I read poetry, I want readers to make their own meaning--that's most of the fun! Most narrative poems either don't have enough to them (they are boring or angsty) or they give too much information. Give me the abstract, the mysterious, any day.

All of this sounds fabulous. I learned so much. My project went perfectly well. Except for the fact that I cheated. I actually feel a little bad putting this on my blog because the readers I have that aren't in the class might actually feel like they were lied too. Bah! I guess I don't care that much. My blog looks like I did a good job of posting on most days. But I didn't. On a lot of days, I just wasn't feeling creative. Sometimes, I'd use those days to write analysis. Actually, I got a computer (I had been using my school issued laptop for everything) about a month before the completion of the project, and I've still been too lazy to transfer all my photos over to it. This made writing photopoems at home rather difficult. I could use whatever photos I scrounged from other places (facebook or the galleries of friends). But mostly, I just wrote a lot of analysis because it was easier. Let me rephrase that--I wrote analysis on the okay days. On the bad days, I didn't bother posting at all.

I'd arrive at my blog after not posting for four days and think, "Fuck! I said I was going to post every day!" Then I'd write a bunch of posts (mostly analysis) as quickly as I could. Before I posted them, I'd change the date. Then, on other days, I'd feel creative. Poems would spring out of my fingertips like a bunny out of a magician's hat. On those days, I'd save the poems up for future days when I'd be too lazy to actually write. While I still did the same amount of work I would have done if I'd have posted everyday, I feel like I've lied to, well, the world. I feel even more guilty about this after rereading my midterm reflection. I discuss the photoblog of Christine Lebrasseur: "[her blog] has some of the most incredible photography I've seen on a blog. Yet I'm becoming increasingly certain that Christine doctors her photos to give the colors vibrancy and to make the shadows fall just right. While this does give the pictures a strong impact, I think it also takes away something in terms of honesty."

Upon rereading my project proposal I realized that I did go beyond what I proposed to do. Even if I lied a little bit to get there, my project was still a success--a huge success.