You have to admire the energy of some of the marvellous poetry bloggers I’ve linked to in my sidebar. Where do they find the time? Where do Jim Behrle and K. Silem Mohammad find a spare moment to do anything else? They seem to have discovered the point of blogging– which it appears most are still searching for in (where else?) their own blogs– and latched onto a frenetic and interesting pace that suits what they have to say.

Some folks even maintain two or more sites, one for commentary, another for poetry. That makes some sense to me when there is a more cohesive project, such as Michael Magee who maintains both the often entertaining Mainstream Poetry log as well as the somewhat less interesting (to me personally, and perhaps because I don’t understand it) My Angie Dickinson, dedicated to a series of his poems.

But I’m still not sure what this is all about, or how much value there is to it. Or more precisely, how much added value there is. I see many metaphors for blogging, most of which are meant to invoke the grassroots, egalitarian nature of blogs. They are undoubtedly an improvement over the mimeograph as a means of distribution. But do they create something new or just encapsulate the old? Are the small legions of bloggers, huddled around their particular object of fancy, frantically typing away on their keyboards to spread their word, creating something that wouldn’t otherwise exist?

I’m sure the literal composition of the groups is different, since blogging is not physically limited in the same way as other means of communication, and its asynchronous nature allows for a tremendous force of aggregated opinion to build up that would otherwise be dispersed silently over time… but somehow the whole enterpise seems to be leading to contraction rather than expansion, which is the opposite of what I am most interested in.

This might sound unduly negative, when it isn’t meant to be. I still read weblogs every day and they remain interesting. But from my perspective, for each bridge that is built allowing people with similar interests to come together who otherwise would not be able to, two new walls are formed because folks seek some way to differentiate themselves. There is a guise of generality and eclecticism to a lot of weblogs– particularly poetry blogs, where it stands out because I would love to see poetry blogs that are less like political weblogs– that overlays a manifest specificity of thought, opinion, and position.

Perhaps this is a symptom of, in the minds of some authors, the fracturing of the poetic enterprise, where the dispute over what is within and without the circle has become of paramount importance. In jazz discussion groups and weblogs, for example, there is always aesthetic discussion of what is good and what is not, often disguised in very objective terminology. But the discussion of what is jazz and what is not, while noticeable, doesn’t occupy the same central positions as does the seemingly endless debates in the poetry blogs that ultimately serve only to shift the focus away from the art. I suspect that more jazz lovers come to discussions seeking others who want to talk about their favorite art form, while more poetry lovers come to the discussion seeking to find those who will reinforce their own views of what the art is.

This isn’t a good or bad thing, necessarily, and there is an element of chicken-or-egg to consider, as these debates are as old as the hills. But it seems strange to me that weblogs often seem to result in a cliquish divisiveness where I would have expected something akin to a bazaar, or at least a convention where the spirit of a broader notion of community often prevails.