Blog Lit Redux

I just read a really interesting post on Susan Schultz' Tinfish Editor's Blog. It's about "blog lit," and what might consitute some characteristics thereof.

I think I may be ambivalent re: the notion of blog lit. On the one hand, I love the idea of using the medium in the message - of exploiting the form, both textual and social, that blogs enable (and require) - not least of all the collaborative, and sometimes a(nta)gonistic, comments. On the other hand, I sure don't want to create another genre, with its own generic (or genetic) characteristics.

Fortunately, I think that the Blog Form (even in the rather narrow window of Blogger) provides for enough latitude that there is very little danger of that happening. Or at least the parameters of the genre are so capacious as to be meaningless. For one thing, one can incorporate multiple media. And if you do even a little html, Word Press lets you expand your repetoire (and, as Susan points out, refers you to other posts - based on content, not style or form, unfortunately).

However, as I've mentioned before, I can't think of many examples of books or blogs that utilize the protocols of blogging (whether structural or stylistic).

I like the idea of Spring and All's being a model for blog lit. Not to mention Descent of Winter. I'm "teaching" Gertrude Stein's early poetry right now. I have absolutely no doubt that she'd be a blogger, in today's world. She'd link to prepositions.

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What is the relation of this blog to my real job (postsecondary eduction)? Is it siphoning off and diluting any real aesthetic or pedagogical ideas I might have? Or is it providing a proving ground for them? Certainly, the tone is much breezier and offhand than that I'd use in an article (there are those generic parameters, again - with a vengeance).

Occasionally, I post poems that I assume noone would ever want to publish. To my surprise, one day I found out that some of them had been re-published - to a blogzine, of course. That's good, I guess. The tenured have less fear of being dooced than the genl. population, to be sure. But you sure can lose face and embarrass yourself. Particularly by aimless posts with no real point.