If I could wave a magic wand and make any blogger write more it would be Andrew. Most bloggers are very replaceable. Good economists are a dime a dozen and there are too many pundits. General interest blogs are generally boring (including mine) and single subject blogs are often not much better. But good poets are a rare find in any age.
And Andrew is a good poet.
Unfortunately, of all the bloggers that I regularly keep tabs on, he is the one that I am most afraid will quit blogging.
He has two blogs currently up. He keeps Unsleepable (used to be Philosophical Poetry) up for archival purposes and he is now supposedly blogging at Unchained Logos. I say supposedly, because he has only managed to put up four posts in four months. And two of those posts were reworks of poems that he had already posted on Philosophical Poetry.
To make matters worse, both of these web sites have a habit of going down for long periods of time. Anytime his sites go down, I always feel the compulsion to keep checking anxiously to see if they have come back again. I am always afraid that that his poetry is going to disappear for good.
I am have been tempted to assuage my fear somewhat by downloading all of his poems to my hard drive. But should you really intervene if a poet wants to damn his own work?
I don’t know what Andrew’s problems are with his web hosting, but I would gladly fix the problem if I could. I am always tempted to ask him if he wants to use some of my unused bandwidth. But I never do because I can’t offer him his own domain. He would have to sub off of the Ethereal Land and I don’t think that would be acceptable.
Heck, I would even pay for his own web hosting package if he was not too proud to accept. But I don’t think that the problem is money. Instead, I suspect the problems have something to do with the famous poetic temperament and I can’t help him with that.
Regardless of what Andrew’s problems are, I encourage everyone to check out his poems. Pass up this opportunity and you may never get another one. In fact, currently most of his poems are inaccessible do to some kind of technical problem. But you can still find some of his best.
If you are short on browsing time here are some of my favorites (of those that are still accessible)…
Flattered I’m sure!
My problems are several.
Hosting issues abound, money is a minor issue in that I’m actually shelling out a lot for what is not always reliable service. I’m trying to transition (as I write!) to something else.
Temperament? Why, yes, thank you. One thing that I constantly struggle with is the feeling that I am incapable of turning out good writing, of whatever kind. I love everything I write for at least an hour, but after that dissatisfaction sets in until I grow to hate some things.
I have quite a bit that I’ve written in the past months that I haven’t wanted to post online for this reason.
Another major issue is time. I’m newly married so that adds some demands to me, and the job I’m currently at is erratic and consuming as far as hours go.
And yes, temperament. No matter how many people tell me they like what I write, I can never manage to believe it of myself. I have never submitted anything for publication in any journal of any kind, despite protestations of others around me. I can’t rationally explain that.
I can promise to get back to work, get stuff up and running, and write more. And I do so appreciate the appreciation. We’ll see what happens.
I am glad to hear that you are flattered. I hope to see that flattery achieve its desired results soon.
By the way, your archives web site is currently messed up. I am sure you already know this. But speaking as the one responsible for picking out the Poem of the Week over at the Ethereal Voice, I would love it if you got that fixed.
I knew that being newly married (congratulations by the way) was one of the reasons that you were not posting. After all, you already told me as much in an e-mail you sent me a while back. But I was not sure if you wanted that to be public knowledge so I left it out of my little review.
Speaking only from what I have seen, I would be positively insulted if a modern poetry journal published any of my work (if I was a poet that is). So I can’t really fault you for not submitting your work. But why don’t you put up a pay pal link? Or better yet, self publish a book.
I don’t know if you know it or not, but you can self publish a book with out spending any of your own money. It is called print on demand. As people buy your book, the company prints it. The Silverware Thief has used that method to publish his bookand he got Amazon to sell it for him. I would buy a book that had all of your poems in it.
[…] You can also read a review of his two sites that I did awhile back. […]
Good post.