CPRW Review: Broetry

Today is the formal beginning of my critical relationship with the Contemporary Poetry Review.

Many of you may have noticed, if at all, that there have been no reviews since February.  I have actually written three reviews since that time: they will be appearing at the Contemporary Poetry Review.

The first is here: a review of Brian McGackin's Broetry.

Enjoy!

Though I don't foresee reviews continuing to appear here, I will still weigh in on matters large and small. Thank you for your support of me as I began my foray into reviewing.

Have you laughed yet today?

Because you will.

(thanks, reddit!)

Footnotes and Ebooks

So the New York Times presents an interesting question today:

What will ebooks do to footnotes?

The author laments that footnotes being relegated to endnotes is destructive.  I agree.

But HTML has shown us what needs to happen with footnotes: hyperlinks.  Now, this isn't yet possible in all ebooks because all ebooks aren't for presentation on touch screens.

But they will be.

Solve the problem now, even with the clunky cursor system of the Kindle and you get folks used to the idea of hyperlinked footnotes and expecting that sort of interaction when capacitive touchscreens are the norm in ereaders.

Art & God

Over at Lutheran Surrealism, Kirby posits that:

Art is a personal dialogue with God.

It's a fine idea. Perhaps finer than he intends.

Humans are, by nature, observers--"pattern makers" as Grendel calls them. So when we see art--that result of a dialogue between the artist and God we impose a pattern upon it.

This pattern becomes our experience of the art.

It's been said that art is in fact a conversation between the audience and the artist mediated through the artifact.

I think, though, that this discounts the importance of the artist in creating the artifact in the first place.

I'll be one of the ones leading the charge to tell you that, once the artifact exists, the artist wanes in importance, approaching insignificance--but it is the height of ignorance to claim the artist is never important--or rather is not of primary importance.

So that conversation with God is the spark. The reception of the inspiration from the muse. Art is born.

Then the artifact exists. If it finds and audience it becomes a second art--the art of communication between humans.

Between the divine and the human to between humans is the distilled story of creation--renewed each time an artist lifts his chisel, his keyboard, his paintbrush, his bow, his pen.