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Stacy Schiff on Wikipedia (The New Yorker)
If you're interested in Wikis and the Wicked (those who keep Wikis going), check out this vastly erudite, well-researched and entertaining article about the Wikipedia.
Wiki Not Wicca
If you enjoy blogging, the logical next step for you is to start dabbling in Wiki (no, that’s not Wicca—something else entirely). Think of Wikis as “super-blogs,” easy-to-find blogs encompassing the whole world. Although a Wiki site is often started by an identifiable person or group, the site as a whole seems to lack the stamp of one person’s personality, as is often the case with blogs (although Wikis also involve comment and interaction).
A Wiki is above all a place for collaborative work (as well as interesting reading).
The characteristic linking lists with others you find on personal blogs is done a little differently in the Wiki world, although in my limited experience, the line blurs. You won’t usually find such lists.
What is being done in Wiki World is developing fast and in a lot of different directions (like the Big Bang), but in essence you find a number of interested people working on texts as such or ideas expressed in texts in different ways (really different ways). In actual practice, this includes writers workshopping poetry and prose.
A very simple approach is to post something; then other people “edit” that idea, that is, note their modifications, approval, rejection, etc. of the idea. Others can “edit” the response or go back to the original and it takes off from there. Wikis characteristically have a table of contents to help you begin to navigate the site.
A Wiki can encompass all sorts of sites, including personal blogs. A good example is the famous Wikipedia.
Here are a couple of Wiki-type blogs to get you started. I’ll put them in my “Links” section: Check out wetpaint (easy place to start), wikiwikisandbox (introductory), novelas (a fiction wiki), and everypoet (a poetry wiki).
You enter everypoet.com like any web site. This site has many interesting sections, such as the poetry free-for-all where you can enter poetry for serious criticism, a showcase where you can just post a poem for the world to enjoy, a nice index of full text classics, a choice of different types of poetry: dark (for those days), formal, and so on. There’s even a link to site where the authors have devoted themselves to amassing a collection of poetry about the Table of Elements you remember so fondly from high school, poems about actinium, astatine, lawrenciem and a whole bunch I think they’ve added since high school.
Don’t forget to visit the haiku generator for such masterpieces as
cloudlessly cackling
abstractly patiently juice
hastens formlessly.
Hey, the syllable count is right on target!
And as your final treat, visit 43 folders, which includes a wonderful page for those of us addicted to Moleskine notebooks and just the right pen and ink.
A Wiki is above all a place for collaborative work (as well as interesting reading).
The characteristic linking lists with others you find on personal blogs is done a little differently in the Wiki world, although in my limited experience, the line blurs. You won’t usually find such lists.
What is being done in Wiki World is developing fast and in a lot of different directions (like the Big Bang), but in essence you find a number of interested people working on texts as such or ideas expressed in texts in different ways (really different ways). In actual practice, this includes writers workshopping poetry and prose.
A very simple approach is to post something; then other people “edit” that idea, that is, note their modifications, approval, rejection, etc. of the idea. Others can “edit” the response or go back to the original and it takes off from there. Wikis characteristically have a table of contents to help you begin to navigate the site.
A Wiki can encompass all sorts of sites, including personal blogs. A good example is the famous Wikipedia.
Here are a couple of Wiki-type blogs to get you started. I’ll put them in my “Links” section: Check out wetpaint (easy place to start), wikiwikisandbox (introductory), novelas (a fiction wiki), and everypoet (a poetry wiki).
You enter everypoet.com like any web site. This site has many interesting sections, such as the poetry free-for-all where you can enter poetry for serious criticism, a showcase where you can just post a poem for the world to enjoy, a nice index of full text classics, a choice of different types of poetry: dark (for those days), formal, and so on. There’s even a link to site where the authors have devoted themselves to amassing a collection of poetry about the Table of Elements you remember so fondly from high school, poems about actinium, astatine, lawrenciem and a whole bunch I think they’ve added since high school.
Don’t forget to visit the haiku generator for such masterpieces as
cloudlessly cackling
abstractly patiently juice
hastens formlessly.
Hey, the syllable count is right on target!
And as your final treat, visit 43 folders, which includes a wonderful page for those of us addicted to Moleskine notebooks and just the right pen and ink.
Good prose is like a windowpane but . . .
"Good prose is like a windowpane," said George Orwell. But looking out a clear window doesn't always give the most interesting view. The same view gets more intriguing when you're trying to look past the ice flowers that have formed overnight or past heavy rain running in little rivers down the glass.
Poems as Icons
"Just these words" . . . . I had an “aha” moment when I read this phrase on Gino’s Blog (www.ghazalpage.net). My mind, my work, my poetry—like the mind, work and poetry of many writers, I suspect—works hugely by leaping along the net of jewels, illumination by analogy. What leapt to my mind with these words was iconology, the theory of icons.
An icon (which, by the way, is not “painted” but “written”)is not just a picture but a portal through which that which is depicted can interact with the viewer. Some have called an icon a window through which we can see God and through which God can see us.
These windows operate through different types of glass. To use some classic examples, if you look into an icon of a hodegetria (an icon of the Virgin pointing toward the Christ child) you can seek understanding of she who shows the way; a psychosotria (the eyes of Christ and the Virgin looking into each other), you can seek understanding of communication without words; a virgin eleousa (showing the Virgin and the Christ child snuggling, cheeks touching), you can seek understanding of the special warm relationship of a mother and child. These are just suggestions, of course, places of beginning to work with particular icons. The communication using an icon can spin off in dizzying other directions.
I can see the specific words of a poem, words which have to be just those words and no others, serving the same purpose. Here we have to touch on issues of intent and control. Having written my poem-icon, what control do I have over what message(s) others receive from it?
An icon (which, by the way, is not “painted” but “written”)is not just a picture but a portal through which that which is depicted can interact with the viewer. Some have called an icon a window through which we can see God and through which God can see us.
These windows operate through different types of glass. To use some classic examples, if you look into an icon of a hodegetria (an icon of the Virgin pointing toward the Christ child) you can seek understanding of she who shows the way; a psychosotria (the eyes of Christ and the Virgin looking into each other), you can seek understanding of communication without words; a virgin eleousa (showing the Virgin and the Christ child snuggling, cheeks touching), you can seek understanding of the special warm relationship of a mother and child. These are just suggestions, of course, places of beginning to work with particular icons. The communication using an icon can spin off in dizzying other directions.
I can see the specific words of a poem, words which have to be just those words and no others, serving the same purpose. Here we have to touch on issues of intent and control. Having written my poem-icon, what control do I have over what message(s) others receive from it?
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