Michael, I fear your spirit guides are tricking you again. I have called attention here to Alex, not Allen.

Ignore this.

In order to make the nonsense lines not destroy the mood for the reader of your masterpiece, I suggest you make the font color white for those lines.

Roger - see my post #33.

Michael,

If the journal you're submitting to has a clearly stated policy that poems that can be found on the internet will be rejected, I consider it reasonable to take steps to make sure my poems can't be found on the internet. In fact, I'd consider it kind of stupid not to.

I had previously assumed my poems were invisible. Now I know they're not. My current concern is that I have poems still up in mon-Met that I've sent out that can be found in a simple Google search, and if the editor adheres to his clearly stated policy (he may not of course), then in the event that he would have selected them, he'll reject them. I've PMed John Riley for permission to gut them, as per site policy, and I imagine that will fully resolve the problem well before the editor even looks at them. In future I'll just be a lot more careful about gutting before I submit a poem that hasn't already been culled; I'll use a false title and I'll also make sure rssing don't scrape my poem. Why? As above, because I think I would be stupid not to: why take a risk, however small, when it's so easy not to.

I don't think this is a big deal in the sense that it's simple to take steps to get avoid. I've been saying this from my very first post.

My intention here was to point out that what was commonly believed about poems being invisible on this site is not quite the case. People can and should decide for themselves how they want to respond to this information. I have no preferences about what others do. I did think that at least some people would want to know about this. I have been a little surprised at the resistance there appears to have been to my attempts to calmly communicate some simple facts.

best,

-Matt

I'm pretty sure it's scraping a certain number of characters not whole lines. It took just over three lines of my poem, which was in IP, so short lines. When it scrapes non-poem posts, it takes maybe the equivalent of line on the computer screen. See here for some examples. So, as per Roger's suggestion, a couple full lines of white text would do it. This has the added bonus that you can include a message for rssing should you so desire :)

-Matt

I just pruned non-met. You're welcome. Usually, a quick quiet word to a mod suffices if a poem needs to get poofed.

I hope you'll forgive me for being perfectly honest, but this whole teapot tempest reminds me of workshop days in the pre-electronic world. Back then, before photocopying their poems to be workshopped, some people very carefully wrote a small c with a little circle around it, followed by the date and their name. They actually believed that was an important step, that it only took a little time, and they thought everyone should do it. One of them even told *me* to do it! ;)

They may as well have been throwing salt over their shoulders. Others took a further step: they literally mailed (by U.S. post) a copy of their poem, to themselves, and then filed the unopened envelope. They wanted the time stamp on the post mark, because if some nefarious Boris Badenov stole their poem, they could whip out the sealed envelope in court, proving his dastardly guilt (and presumably waltzing out of the courtroom with Natasha on the vindicated poet's arm).

I delight to think of all those file cabinets, all across the country, crammed full of sealed envelopes, their half-brewed liquor never tasted by the tongues of unsatiated editors, their locked drawers providing weighty testimony to the mute inglorious miltons of America's heartland.

Best,

Bill

Thanks Bill, that's much appreciated. I did PM John Riley as per the instructions at the top of the non-met forum. I only mentioned my concern here to illustrate my point, not as a complaint or as a public request. But again, I appreciate that you've done it.

I figure the risks here are greater than the (c) symbol, and the situation rather different, but I did enjoy your story.

I hear that you and Michael think it's a waste of time, and I'm sure you know far more about these things than I do. It does seem reasonable to me not test an explicit and newly-minted editorial policy when I don't have to. The editor says he says he searches for every poem he decides to accept and will exclude those he can find online. Why is it foolish of me to believe him and make sure he can't find the poem? That's the bit I'm confused about. And if I'm being foolish why did you just cull non-Met so that he now can't find the poem? Or were you just humouring me?

best,

Matt

If you're one of those going for the nonsense prefixing of poem post, are you stumped for what gibberish to use? Then, here's some help--

- need a paragraph of junk prose? how about this?
- need some line of rubbish poetry? how about this?

Cheers,
...Alex

There are limitations to what Alex and the mods can do...there is frustration that some journal editors are less tolerant than others...there is annoyance that the topic (in general, not this particular permutation of it, which was definitely news) has come up before and will no doubt come up again...but I don't think any of these things are Matt's fault. Let's not kill the messenger, people.

[Edited to add: Oh, no, Alex...I can see the crits now: "Sorry, your poem isn't working for me, Julie, but your rubbish rises roughly like a warm reef."]

These are very good, Alex, very, very good. But, as for me :

"Lorem Ipsum is my choice.
I just adore her squeaky voice.
And if you mock my sweetie-cake,
I'll bop you with a rotten hake."

Copyright © Allen Tice 2015

' the Sphere is a workshop, and it's purpose is to discuss works in progress.'

I agree with Michael that this thread is a bit 'so whatish?' just get on with it. but it did set me thinking about what a poetry forum actually does, workshopping, yes, but that to me covers a range of possibilities.
A poster may, and there are some who do, simply post a poem, wait till all the comments are made then thank everyone, that happens regularly, sometimes not even a thank you, just silence. Perfectly reasonable, no demand that a poet defend, explain, respond to comments, one assumes the poet/poster has read them, and that's all that's required.
Others basically assume the poem is finished, that all criticism, no matter how insightful is beside the point, it is their poem, they wrote it and no one else can rewrite it for them. Again a perfectly reasonable approach, a poem only has one author, ( there may be the rare exception, but really can you think of any major poem written by two people, or more.) So are these people simply showcasing their poems, evading the workshop process, I don't think so because the implied learning experience is ongoing, the criticiem of poem A will influence poem B which is yet to be written, in that way poetry forums can have a powerful influence.
The last category, I can think of, most closely fits Michael's idea of 'workshopping' a poem, that is the poet who revises the poem in line with suggestions, incorporates ideas or actual phrases suggested by commentators. This works for some, but also is often disastrous for others, poets lose control of their own poem, lose their voice and instead the poem becomes less not more. We have all seen this happen, and it emphasises the point that a poem is a solo creation, try to make it otherwise and it ceases to be a poem by a certain person and instead becomes a poem by an Erato workshop, with mixed results.
Perhaps the one other category is the suggested edit, I often think this is the best form of advice as it mimics the editors time honoured role in the production of literature. If a comment suggest you drop S1, and you do so, the work is still entirely your's, your 'voice' is intact.
There are probably aspects of this subject that others can think of, and also this is not part of the thread although is a response to a comment on the thread.
If you've heard it all before, well sorry but you didn't have to read it and if you're wondering why I bothered, well I am hopelessly jet lagged and there is not a lot else to do at 2 am.

Odd, but I just again examined an American, supposedly high-status, publication of (what it still pretends is) poetry, that stringently bans all Internet adultery whatever. This bit of bound wastepaper recently morphed from Ezra Pound and others (including friends of mine) into a throbbing cat box. I have taken it from my roster to the yard.

Yet there are other Internet-rejecting slick magazines and non-slicks in the USA that I wouldn't mind gracing. Notions of power and legality and superiority and sheer money make them keep their Internet defenses up. And they are right to do so if they want, from their monetary perspective, and they do have the time and manpower to make make their shields work quite well.

No proof ever of rejection from finding something online? Duh! Michael, tell me why a mega-magazine would take the time to reply in these online days with a human note: "we found your pantoum online"? They wouldn't deign, nor would *me* in their place, either.

I cannot speak for the UK, and OZ, and Canada, and Pitcairn Island. But if Alan Jerkins and the TLS are big enough to be unthreatened by minor "prepublication" somewhere, I say God Bless Him, two times!

There's those who ban, and those who might not.

Nice one, Allen. Well played.

The most effective solution would be to put the workshop forums into a mode that makes them invisible unless you're signed in, as we currently do for the Drills & Amusements forum where people post magazine contest entries. I believe this has been suggested in the past and the consensus was that it's a bad idea, perhaps because being able to read the site without being signed in is presumably what allows us to attract new members. But if that's the reason, one solution might be to allow people who want to explore the site without registering to sign in using "guest" as their username and "password" as the password (with that particular combination not having posting privileges). Quite apart from the question of pre-publication and editors, I myself have never been comfortable with the idea of posting my unfinished and possibly to-be-abandoned work where anyone can read it.

And we should also admit, though it pains us, that those editors who regard places like Eratosphere as previous publication have a pretty good point. If you put something on the internet and let everyone in the world read it, even if it's only for a month or two before it's pruned, it sure does sound like publication to me. In fact, if you published your work in a print-only magazine with a circulation of 400, say, it's likely to be seen by fewer people than will see it if you post it at Eratosphere during a busy month, and it's certainly true that far more people have the opportunity to see it even if they don't take advantage of that opportunity. Isn't that what publication is?

*You* are right, of course, it was well done.
(And the other ten verses are unposted. Monkey no see what needy no see. )

Best, and Thanks also.

At the moment there are 8 members and 66 guests viewing the Sphere, it has when I have looked been the usual ratio, so hiding the Sphere would lose a huge floating audience, some idle viewers others perhaps as dedicated as members but not wishing to comment, just read.
I think this ratio is vital for the future life of the Sphere and far more important than trying to sidestep the reasonable request from editors that poems be fresh and unseen before.

So, a few days back I contacted the editor of Rattle as I said I would. Since this thread continues, I thought I'd report back on his response.

I told him I posted poems on workshop forums that were public, in the sense that anyone who knows where to look can find them, but that they were hidden from search engines.

I also told him that sometimes "traces" of the poem might show up in search, in the form of a few lines appearing at rssing.com that might show up in a search, but in these cases, the poem would have already been deleted from the site.

He said neither case would cause a problem. He said he doesn't want subscribers reading poems they've read before. He said that technically the general rule is that if a poem is accessible online, it counts as published, but what he doesn't know won't hurt him.

So basically, he doesn't mind if they're workshopped off radar, he doesn't even mind that searching for the poems may show that they've been work-shopped in the past, he just doesn't want to be able to find them when he looks. So this tends to suggest that, at least for Rattle, ensuring that a poem is gutted/culled before it's submitted would seem to be enough, given that Alex already ensures that search engines don't cache copies of the poems.

-Matt

I don't think we workshop poems to gain an "audience," Ross. A workshop is not a showcase, and if we want to be credible when we tell editors that a given poem that was workshopped here was not "published" then it makes no sense to say that we ought not to lose our "huge floating audience" of "idle viewers." In fact, you make my point for me. We don't need an audience of idle viewers, and it's inconsistent with the mission of the site, and perhaps eliminating such an "audience" would cut back on vanity posts that the poet only pretends to be wanting critiques for but is actually just preening.

Of course, if my suggestion of having a "guest" log-in were followed, it would just take an idle viewer a few seconds to knock on the door and gain viewing access. So the only idle viewers who would not get to lurk here and admire your work for no particular reason germane to workshopping would be those who are so idle and uninterested that they don't want to type the word "guest" into the username field.

In order to send sign-in cookies to a visitor, Eratosphere software now needs to note the visitor's Internet address. Moreover, from its records Eratosphere may recognize repeat visitors and members that are not signed at the moment. I -- as a member -- often come to Eratosphere to look, but leave again without signing-in. If my own usage is any guide, I am very often counted as a visitor. So those simple statistics may not translate the way Ross suggests. The "floaters" might be fewer than appear.

Bots. Before long, if not already, bots will include "guest" along with other "sign-in" spoofs. Even a very simple "captcha" requirement that a child could solve should block bots pretty well.

I usually only log in to post something, and then log right out again. I don't want people to know how much time I actually waste here.

Some of those "guests" in the stats are actually bots, I suspect.

I think the current division between Met and The Deep End would make it easy to maintain a generally-available workshop section and a password-protected workshop section. And if people have to expend effort to access TDE, they'll be thoroughly annoyed if the stuff there is below expectations, so we can maintain the "this doesn't belong at TDE" culture, too. Everybody wins.

The figures for members who are active at any given moment may also be overstated. There are many times that I sign in (my computer does it automatically) and then don't sign out when I'm done. I often leave the tab open on a thread I'm reading and either leave my desk or do other things online on other tabs in my browser. So it might appear that I'm here at the Sphere, but I'm really not.

Again, I think the only argument in favor of making workshop threads visible is the idea that we need to do so in order to attract new members. That may well be true, though I have my doubts. But apart from that, to allow anyone wandering by to read a workshop thread just for sport, having ruled out in advance any thought of posting a comment or critique, is to "publish" our poems no matter how much we may try to convince editors that that's not what's really happening.

Roger's second paragraph just above : totally.

But nobody seems to care about it, Roger, except for a small but vociferous group pf people on the Sphere, and possibly one or two editors. Everybody else appears perfectly willing to accept that this is a workshop, that the poems are only up for a month or two and often not in final form, that it's a place where poets work on their art, not a publishing venue; and that while the title and a few lines might show up later on some sleazoid leech-site, it has nothing to do with the world of poetry and no connection. That should be the end of the subject. I don't see the need to keep pecking and poking at it until you convince others to take a closer look.

Michael, after your first sentence there's much to what you say above. A great deal of what one worries about depends on what one's goals are, and obviously many people have been happy enough with what they have gotten out of this site. They are likely to continue to do so, and that's fine.

However, looking very closely at something and thinking very hard about how it behaves are not yet illegal. Eratosphere has many facets in the wider world, some not obvious at all. Your final sentence is about as wise as anything I could come up with, and as ambiguous as I could like.

Ultimately, I simply do not like the idea of showing my unfinished work, work which I might possibly decide to burn and pretend I never wrote, to anyone in the world who decides they are curious about me. And apart from comfort there's security, since I have had several of my translations that I posted here stolen and posted for years on blogs (until I finally got Google, the blog host, to remove them). And though maybe you are not in the habit of submitting to publications that are extremely strict about prior publication, others submit to different venues. Highlights, for example, is extremely particular about pre-pub(l)ication, and that is why I no longer post children's poems here that I think I might wish to send them. So you are wrong that nobody cares. I'm not nobody. And I doubt very much I am the only one who would prefer a log-in system of access.

But I turn it back on you. Why do you care if workshop threads are invisible unless you log in? Is there some actual advantage you gain that you are unwilling to give up to indulge the likes of me who have reasons to want it the other way? If you have no reason and you actually do not care one way or the others, why are you not willing to indulge the few people like myself who would prefer a bit more privacy?

Roger, you are right to insist that one must be particularly careful with poems for children in the context of pre-pubication.

Typo of the year. :)

Michael, many of us would love to be able to go to a real-world venue like the Powow River Poets, where we might have an opportunity to receive expert comment in a less public space, but we don't have that option, as you do. Why begrudge us a password-protected clubhouse, for those occasions when we'd like a tad more privacy? I would probably still use the publicly-visible Met board most of the time.

Yes, I do sometimes use e-mail to quietly inflict my shier stuff on people I've met here and whose opinions I respect, but I'm wary of wearing out my welcome with them. One of the beauties of a workshop is that people don't have to feel obligated to read your stuff when they're too busy. They just don't show up.

I don't think we workshop poems to gain an "audience," Ross. A workshop is not a showcase,

Roger
I did not say we did, I did not say a workshop is a showcase, stop twisting my words, all poetry forums have an audience or viewers or readers, what else do you call them.
I delineated exactly my position in a lengthy if slightly irrelevant comment about how posters respond to comments made about their poems.
If you have a problem about any of my posts make them to me directly, here or in an email.
I will be happy to argue the toss with you.

Also

"We don't need a 'huge floating audience' of 'idle viewers'

Who are you speaking for besides yourself, do you always use the royal plural. Has it occured to you that 'idle viewers' could become dedicated members, that's how many people find things on the net, do you really want to hide the Sphere away for some precious elite, and then what? watch it wither and die for lack of new members.
Do you really think workshopping a poem on the Sphere is some special event. There are hundreds of poetry forums, all competing for members.

Ross, I didn't twist your words. I quoted them. And I made my points directly to you, so I don't understand why you are suggesting otherwise.

I also acknowledged more than once that a perfectly valid reason to leave the workshop threads open would be to attract new members, so yes, to answer your question, it did occur to me. In fact, that's why I suggested allowing for a guest sign-in.

I'm confused why you are taking such a hostile tone. You're acting like I attacked you personally because I disagreed with you, and it has caused you to disown your own words, ignore what I actually said, and to make snotty comments about my supposed use of the royal we and my dedication to the "elite." I suspect what's really going on here is that I recently failed to appreciate some of the art you posted in another forum, and your feelings were hurt.

But to clarify for your sake, in this thread I only said that we (in my opinion) don't need spectators or an idle audience in the workshop threads, but if people want to sit in and watch what goes on in a workshop thread without becoming a registered member it would be a good idea for the sake of privacy and pre-publication concerns to require them to log in as a guest or register as a member. I never said that worshopping is a special event for the elite, nor did I say anything to suggest that this is what I believe.

If it started as a public debate, i.e. in a public thread, then it should continue as a public debate. It doesn't make sense that one person (you Ross) should have an option to post opinions publicly and then insist that all disagreement (i.e. Roger) takes place--as it were--in some invisible space.

I don't see what the problem is. There are gazillions of places to send work and no one can write new poems to submit to all. Just choose among what you want to keep secret to send to the editors who (if they do) demand google-proof poems.

If someone has to post every single poem for help to make it a fair-to-middling or "good" poem, then that person hasn't yet got to the stage where submitting to editors should be an option. It might very well be that an editor would like to know if the poem in question is really the poet's own work, or if it is a collective effort. I don't think that should be hidden from view.

I'm not talking about small items that fresh experienced eyes will note (a line slightly off-meter, a weak opening/closing to a good poem, an opportunity to weigh the pros and cons from various perspectives.)

NO ONE has the absolutely correct answer about how the poem should be changed--no one except the poet.

This isn't a place to bring OLD poems to present one a week to get an audience. We see often see excuses for crappy postings "oh, this is an old one I took from my stash of fifty million written over the past twenty-five years (and now I have finally got an audience)".

All poems posted should reflect the current level of competence of the poet, i.e. it should be NEWLY WRITTEN and the author seeking, truly seeking, advice about improving not only that particular poem but improve his/her writing ability. After a few months of this, the poet should be able to stand on his own feet. If not, you are in the wrong forum.

We see a lot of pompous and silly comments and chit-chat these days in response to poems posted--rather than not helpful comments based on the prosody toolbox.

This has lowered Eratosphere standards.

That said, there are (thank goodness) still many (both newcomers and oldtimers) who comment in helpful ways, who know what they are talking about when they make a suggestion based on craftsmanship. And they are the ones who make Eratosphere a fine community.

Don't fix it if it ain't broken.

There are exceptions to all of the above. So I think those who know when it doesn't apply to them will know.

If you can't write a poem that would find a place in a magazine without collective effort, you aren't ready. Rather than establish a pattern of off-kilter poems and idle chit chat, go back to your chambers and work on the craft.

Don't try to fool the editors. They are smarter than you are. (And than I am.) They have their own rules and are entitled to them.

Hi Janice,

Your post makes a number of points that seem to me to be largely unconnected to the thread: No one is saying that they want to post every single poem for critique, nor is anyone worried about their fair-to-middling poems being found by editors. Ditto old poems that don't reflect current level of competence. Generally, I think the concern relates to posting one's best poems. Nor are we discussing standards of critique or talking about people using the forum to collectively write poetry, I don't think. I value work-shopping and the feedback from it very highly, but I don't let anyone else write my poems -- nor I think do Roger or Julie. I'm not saying you aren't making interesting points, just that I can't see their relevance to this thread.

What we are talking about is cases in which someone is specifically hoping to get a poem published in a particular magazine/venue or type of magazine (poetry for children in Roger's case). Nothing would make me happier than getting a poem published in Rattle, my favorite poetry magazine, to which I have a long-term subscription. It's really no solace to be told that there are thousands of other publications out there. Therefore I'm keen to comply with their requirements.

There are concerns too that don't relate to editors. Julie has expressed a preference for privacy in regard to the personal content of her work, and Roger has pointed to having his had work stolen, and a general desire not to have his work-shopped poems visible to all and sundry.

In general, what you seem to be saying is: if you don't like the way the forum works then don't post your poems here (if you don't like the rules, don't play). Whereas, what Roger and Julie are saying, I believe, is that this is exactly what they are doing already. There are poems they'd like to post, but are not doing so because of the way the forum currently works. If the way the forum works were tweaked slightly, they would feel more comfortable posting these poems. What I'd be interested to know is, how, if at all, would such changes impact on you? How would you or the Sphere be worse off?

For me at least, this is far less about trying to fool the editors as to try to do my best to comply with their requirements. Personally, I would prefer a policy of honesty. This is why I contacted the editor of Rattle told him what I was doing in terms of work-shopping, and asked him where he stood on it (see above). If possible, I'd rather be honest in my dealings with editors than pretend, despite Michael's misgivings in this area.

best,

-Matt

I hoped this little post-scriptum would keep the innocent from feeling shot at. Anyone who doesn't post old poems, etc., should not feel targeted, or insulted or feel they are being shown the door.

That said, what I do if I want to submit to Rattle and similar is to send a poem which is not workshopped. How hard is that?

I've had my work highjacked as well, so I don't put up the final version when I do workshop. Basically what I am saying is that since there is no solution that will suit everyone to a tee, why fiddle with it at all? It is just more work for Alex. If Eratosphere has worked for more than ten years (11, 12, I've lost count) why complicate things?

We need to change because the technology has changed AND--whether there is causation or not--the culture here has changed dramatically for the worse. I don't agree at all that what we have had here the past few years is working.

I do want to acknowledge Alex's heroic Eratosphere efforts for more than fifteen years, which were not part of his original plan. The original plan was to run a first-class online literary journal--Eratosphere was originally a minor adjunct to that vision. He has adapted before at great sacrifice and I believe he would do it again if he thought it would better implement his vision.

As for consensus, I don't see that as a goal or a precondition to change. It's Alex's choice, and in fact the odds are that we would be better off if he embraced a model that caused a few of the bullies here to leave.

I've been to see what Tim said in the post you quoted earlier, Matt.

This is from his FB post.

Eratosphere is not a blog nor is it Facebook.

Tim is a writer-friendly editor and he exemplifies further in the thread where he first announced the policy change.

Otherwise, I am in general agreement with what Mike Juster wrote. If I am numbered among the bullies, just say so and I'll leave.

Janice,

I wasn't offended by what you said, I just couldn't see it's relevance to the topic at hand, though I think perhaps I'm a little clearer now.

This is what I take you to be saying: A good poet shouldn't need a workshop, and only uses it to iron the odd metric bump or weak line. So it should be very easy not to workshop a poem should one be wary about privacy/security issues. However if one does feels the need to workshop the poem, then one is getting some added value, and this puts one at an unfair advantage and it's only fair that an editor should know this. Is that right?

I must say that this reminded me of an old joke. A man goes to the doctor and says, "My arm hurts if I do this" and the doctor says "Well, don't do that then" :) Personally, I find work-shopping my poem is a very useful part of getting it ready for publication, rather like test-driving it. I don't need anyone to tell me what to write, but I do find feedback from others invaluable in assessing what isn't working as well as it could be, or what isn't coming across. I don't think this is unfair, as anyone who wants to can join a poetry forum if they wish to (or show a poem to friends etc), and it's still my work when it's finished: it's not a poem written by committee. So, if I want to submit a poem to Rattle, I'd want to workshop it first. (And incidentally, there's currently no security-related reason I shouldn't, in case I've given the impression that there is -- see below. Rattle was just my example.)

I guess I find myself wondering why you say that there's no solution that will work for everyone? So far no one has raised any concrete objection to changes. Perhaps there is an alternative way of doing things that suits Roger and Julie better and doesn't inconvenience others? Take the password-protecting and creation of Deep Drills, for example.

As for work for Alex, I imagine he's the best judge of what's too much work for him and what isn't. For all we know, adding password protection might take five minutes (it might not, of course!)

Regarding what Tim said, I've corresponded with him on this: see post #58 on this thread. He said, that technically anything publicly accessible counts as published, but what he doesn't know about won't hurt him. So basically, workshop away, but make sure your poem can't be found. I'm happy that I can take steps to do this for future poems that I workshop on the Sphere.

Best,

Matt

Again, to quote Matt, "What I'd be interested to know is, how, if at all, would such changes impact on you? How would you or the Sphere be worse off?"

It's one thing to make light of the concerns that I have expressed, and it's all well and good if you do not share them, but why not indulge those concerns if there's no skin off your nose?

And of course it's Alex's decision. No one suggested otherwise. It very well may be that in his judgment the impact of my suggestion would discourage new members from joining, and, as I've said a few times, that is obviously a valid concern which may trump all the other concerns that I have mentioned.

Apart from membership, however, I can't see why anyone feels it would be better to make it as easy as possible for any of the earth's seven billion people to stop by and read non-final drafts of poems you post for critique.

I am in full agreement with Roger.

Size should never be a goal in and of itself. IMO, it is part of what killed West Chester.

I believe that critique is far more important to poets than just tweaking meter. Many times we get too close to our original vision & can't see that the poem on the page is different than the poem in our head. Also, we have many psychological defenses that push us toward the easy poem rather than the poem that is honest but hurts to write. Sometimes I start with an interesting premise but take it somewhere dull with great conviction. When Eratosphere was working well, we would have those types of discussions in a professional way.

Perhaps this question is irrelevant to the issue at hand, and if so, please forgive me. But I wonder how active members are attracted to the Sphere, and if our current level of accessibility has something to do with regular infusions of new blood, as one by one we older participants drift off or wither away? I can see the possible benefits of increased privacy, but I'm not sure we know at this point what the potential downside may be. I do know that I, for one, stumbled across a poem by Rick Mullin while googling something unrelated, which led to me joining in. I wonder if that is a common occurrence?

Best,

Ed