Halfway?

Did I fail to make it sufficiently clear that my attack was not on ron silliman the private human being, but on a commodity with a brand name: Ron Silliman the Poet, Critic and Public Intellectual? I think not, but I’d be foolish if I expected to be understood. I’d be even more foolish to hope I won’t be ignored by all but a very few of my fellow poets. Well, I’m not an academic, after all. Culturally speaking, I’m just a shadow on the edge of a whisper, so I have nothing to lose. I’ve always been pretty damn foolhardy, in a retiring sort of way.

A blog is the petrified emanation of a human being. While there are a few poetry blogs that I dearly love to visit, I’ve always known that the internet is a miserable parody of human interaction. Your typical poetry blog imparts no enduringly useful information and neither engages in radical discussion of anything nor agitates for same. It’s all safely circumscribed, safely forgettable. Total fucking Dullsville, USA, baby.

I’ve been trying to do something different, something broader and more real. Something usefully provocative, even educational. Halfway(?) along, I think I’m doing OK, all things considered. It makes perfect sense that the last few posts would lead up to this point.

I’ll either stop on August 21, 2006, which is the putative anniversary of my first post (q.v.), or on May 1, 2006. My last act as a blogger will be to finish organizing my links, for these denote my solidarities.