I completely agree with Tyrone in that we can't control our readers--who we are, what they do with our work. That's specifically why I 'chose' poetry, the appeal of its ambiguity (I would also argue equally that poetry 'chose' me, though I'm not one of those many fated poets whose bio says they've been writing their whole lives or since their teen years etc.--I only started writing about 3 yrs ago. Perhaps something needed to choose me and it only took it & me longer to unite--which I first misspelled as 'untie' and which may be equally appropriate. I'm a late bloomer). I also think it's a lesson learned after ones poetry has a more public role--after publications, distributions etc., when more and more people are Xposed to it. I'm witnessing Sean go through this in his study of what people are saying online about "The Dark Continent." There's a definite realization of loss of control that we amateurs are still naive enough to sometimes ignore. About a month ago I created a powerpoint poem and subsequently read up on the debate about powerpoint's usefulness/limits in catalyzing complex thought--the main point being that in the program's general business meeting use content is so drastically dumbed down and over-directed that there is no room on the part of the audience for thought. Using powerpoint as an artform attempts to overcome this problem of course (and those of you who've seen my peice can judge for yourselves whether or not this was succesful), but there is still an increased control--I had control over how quickly lines were read, when you had access to them, I could really force line breaks that, had the poem been on a flat page, may have been ignored. Since creating this work I've been thinking often of how one attempts to control (or relinquish control) how one's peice is read. Of course form is the most obvious way of doing this--I think of Jacob's spacing (or Sean's triptych and 'silent' scroll, which wasn't so 'silent' at his WIP reading of it). BUT, I do think that relationship between poets and readers will be/is going through a transformation with the proliferation of poetic blogs, etc. Who knew William was reading? Are there other alumni peeking at our pages? Dillon mentioned the alumni last year writing from Thailand...Who else are we reaching by doing this???? AnYoNe??

Laura mentioned in class (which now feels like ages ago) being 'in dialogue' with writers who we admire (or writers with whom we feel conflict). I have often thought of myself/my poetry in these terms. Of course my last submission refered to several writers, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Adrienne Rich, Joshua Clover (who was at the Claudia Rankine reading). I also have a wierd relationship to Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, probably since I saw the recent (2003?) release of "Sylvia" with Sean, where in the opening of the movie Plath (played (un)convincingly by Gwenyth Paltrow) felt quite overshadowed by Hughes' publications. (But of course, now we know who is more well known...perhaps thanks to a powerful oven). Perhaps my fascination with this was one of my first realizations of the difficulties of a poetic partnership--someone will be more 'succesful' in the commercial sense so what do you do with that? I'm also now having affairs with poets personal lives, mainly, who was in relationships with whom, who had babies or didn't, etc., in order to study how it affected their poetics (the autobiographical reasons here are obvious). Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton began a friendship while their children were young and while they were both just beginning publication--they are also very different women (Kumin described herself as frumpy and Sexton as looking, though not acting at all, like a Stepford wife--I don't feel I'm either). In these cases of Plath, Hughes, Kumin, Sexton, I don't feel so much in dialogue with their poetics, but how their poetics interacted with other areas of their lives. Yeah. Maybe.