AB - To blog or not to blog, this is the question…

TM - I’m not sure it ever was a question for me. It was the fact & availabiliity of blogging technology that started me with it, sort of. For a few years before the blog I was writing an online journal, called This Journal ( http://www.brtom.org/journal.html ), just via my webpage. Then about three years ago blogging came to my attention and it seemed the natural next step. Its ease & speed were directly responsible for my first venture, the poetry blog, finish your phrase. The blog of just poems was shadowed by my ordinary blog, called this journal blug: my day to day doings & odd thoughts & links ... which showed me to be a fairly boring person ... but it kept me in touch with my mother and a few others. Or maybe it showed me to be a moderately interesting person (potentially) who bores others because his blog is as much a covering up as a revealing. If I were forty years younger ... well ... it would be different - or maybe not. When I look at my high school journal ( http://www.brtom.org/1967-68/n1967a.html ), it seems just as much a hiding place ... by showing what I’m guessing the reader wants to see and avoiding much that could or even should have been said. I want(ed) people to like me.

Am I even close to addressing what you wanted? At least you can see that this online writing is wrapped up in identity issues that are still unresolved. Blogging just intensifies the knottiness of it. I feel like in the blogs I’m surrendering to a very thin version of myself--the part of me that shows and hides my dailiness and the part that makes these obsessive little poems.

AB - How would you characterize your blog you should describe it to one of us, i.e. another blogger?

TM - In “plainer” - my current poetry blog at http://brtom.typepad.com/one/ - I’m shuffling around in language, inside the idea of poetry (such as I have), not really thinking of myself as poet but (usually) liking what I make there and knowing that other people don’t see much value in it at all ... imaginary toads in imaginary gardens. But I got tired of scribbling these things on paper. They seem to breathe better in the blog. They look nice.

AB - I sometimes regard my blog as a safe place where I can meet my chosen people, is this the same for you?

TM - I’m happy to have “met” some people via the blogs. I’m always surprised when that rare person says s/he is interested in what I’m doing. But it usually doesn’t go much beyond that ... I don’t get much into the theory of what I’m doing. But through the blogging I’ve learned about & met good poetry types I’d never heard of before ... like Nick Piombino, Chris Murray, Jordan Stempleman, Suzanne Nixon ... and a bit more distantly Joseph Massey, Joshua Corey, Rachel Loden, Amy King ... etc. etc ... even that Anny Ballardini whom I’m sure I’d appreciate more if I could reclaim the Italian language which should have been my birthright.  I just got your work with Henry Gould & am hoping for some free moments to dive in (RI).

AB - I am wondering do we sometimes forget that personal remarks, notes, poems are there for everybody to be seens?

TM - No, I never do forget that this is (or could be) a very public venue. I’m always very conscious of what I’m putting in or leaving out of a post or poem. This is also a result of my being publicly identified as a Roman Catholic brother and a high school teacher.

AB - Do you post many poems on your blog? Is there an actual difference in-between publishing online, mainly through a blog, or printed publishing?

TM - finish your phrase and plainer are nothing but poems. They contain no commentary  on anything -- just poems. I’ve never actually been published on paper. This electrical presentation is the only publishing I’ve really known (aside from a momentary attempt to self-publish some chappies). I’d like to think that some of my stuff is worth paper publishing, but I suspect that that is delusional. I love the material physical substantial presence of book/paper gravity in my hand & eye & nose. 

AB - What kind of actual or immaterial feedback do you receive from publishing online through a blog?

TM - Actually, very little. Just the occasional person with a positive general comment (maybe six a year). Though, when I first started finish your phrase, the very first comment I received was anonymous. Something along the lines of “You can’t write poetry. Stop now. Never ever do it again.” That’s about the only negative comment I’ve gotten. Most people are more polite & just say nothing.

AB - What do you think of the Blogosphere when related to blogs that deal with poetry?

TM - I think poetry is a universe or a polyverse & what is called the blogosphere is just one planet there (or maybe a small cluster) ...and the poetry blogs I read are generally of the new york school / language / dada / (somewhat) vispo ilk ... which sometimes feels like a cul-de-sac or inbred neighborhood ... I’m happy to be able to visit, but just as happy to not have to live there all the time. It has taken me a long time to sort out the various lines of connection and influence, the camps & schools, and I’m still not sure about some of them. But the whole thing has really opened my eyes to Possibility ... and I guess that’s what I’m playing with in my poetry blog ... despite my regular ruts. I'm also (online) a somewhat closeted SoQ fan (to use silliman's sort of silly category).