TOM BECKETT

E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S

Soluble Census

Chiaroscuro

WHAT SPEAKS?

A failed attempt

At voice recognition,

A phenomenology of reception

In the way one opens

At the thought of another

Within.

Another front.

Tom Beckett

Saturday, October 21, 2006

CHIAROSCURO METROPOLI

I currently maintain 3 blogs:

E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S ( http://willtoexchange.blogspot.com ),

Soluble Census ( http://voice-noise.blogspot.com ),

Chiaroscuro Metropoli ( http://chiaroscurometropoli.blogspot.com ).

E-X-C-H-A-N-G-E-V-A-L-U-E-S is a site where I, and others, interview poets. So far 25 in-depth interviews with poets as diverse as Crag Hill, Sheila Murphy, Nick Piombino, Eileen Tabios, Gary Sullivan, Geof Huth, Jean Vengua, Jack Kimball, Shanna Compton (not to mention Anny Ballardini) have been published . It was founded in 2005 and will continue into the foreseeable future.

Soluble Census is a grab bag of notes and poems, stray jottings, diaristic entries and erasures. It's an open notebook which will stay up until I'm tired of looking at it. It is self-consciously provisional.

Chiaroscuro Metropoli is a site where I'm attempting to write a long poem in the open.  It will stay up until the poem is either completed or I give up on it. 

I have a love-hate relationship with blogging. "To blog or not to blog" is sometimes the question; while what form the blogging should take is more to the point.  I'm always searching for ways to use the medium better (with varying success).

Blogs constitute a weird sort of hybrid social space which is still evolving. They combine the private and the public to an astonishing degree. A blog can be an excruciatingly intimate space. And therein lies my fascination with the medium.  I feel little compunction about the appropriateness of posting sex-tinged scenarios next to philosophical musings and/or poetry texts. I love the fluidity, open-endedness of the medium. I love the magic slate quality, too--that you can erase what you've done.

There is a prestige difference between publishing online and publishing in print, but fuck it: Blogs are the pixelicious mimeo machines of our time. Their samizdat potential is profound. If you have access to a computer, and desire enough, you can throw your hat in the cyber-ring, you can step on stage and enact your (fill in the blank).

I've not only made a number of wonderful friendships through the blogosphere, I've reestablished contact with a number of old friends through blogging. Blogs are great networking tools, great connective venues. But most of all a blog is pure potential-- blank canvas available for contamination with one's mess.