Friday, March 12, 2010

Blackbird = Phoenix?

Perhaps that post title is a tad grandiose? Yet I have spring/renewal/rebirth or at least getting over this cold on my mind. I haven't been outside in two days and outside still seems a very far place to go. Yet, I'm a gonna make it, as the old widow at the bottom of the hill says every time I ask how's she doing. She's got her cataracts removed and a wig on her head, and it doesn't really matter how old she actually is.

Today I bought Bento, a database application to use with my new MacBook. My version of Filemaker Pro (5.5!) wasn't working very well with Snow Leopard, spinning beachballs with the slightest change and crashing without warning. I've imported all my old po biz submission data (support wasn't very helpful, butI figured it out), and I'm very happy with it.

I'm planning to create a database for marketing the new book. I'll put all the contacts people give me in there. (Call X in Y city at Z bookstore) and hopefully schedule reading events. I can import contacts to send out email reminders too.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Going Solo

When I started this blog (back in '05?), my idea was to have a shared podium for members of the poetry group 13 Ways. For a while, I was joined here by Robert Thomas, very occasionally by others in the group. But neither Robert nor anyone else is really interested in keeping this going. I'm not sure how much I'm interested in keeping it going. Like many others, I've found the drive-by posts on Facebook to be more than enough.

Recently, Blogger had me migrate my site so that I no longer publish it through FTP with the website 13 Ways. And so it seems a good time to make a break from the past. (Or as good a time as any.) I'm going to make this a solo blog, for now, on the subject of poetry and being a poet in the world and whatever else comes up. (The website www.13ways.org, which I mean to entirely revamp as well, will continue to be about the group and the individual poets in it.)

So we'll see. I hope you will come here and comment and make this a conversation, or it's going to get very quiet. As I said recently, I'd like to collect some good ideas for marketing poetry books, as a start. ( I will attempt to be a better conversationalist too.)

That's enough for now, intent and direction. I think I'm coming down with something, so that's as ambitious as I want to be at the moment. Will turn in and read some of the 22 books beside my bed.

Sunday, March 07, 2010

This blog has moved


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