I still post occasionally.

Bugsy -

For the record, Michael Cantor is my real name. Dezebelle (now that I've been outed, at least spell it correctly) Crump is the name I use in most of my porn flicks.

Not to bring y'all down, but as to whether TDE is dying:


Jean Cocteau: "Every time you look in the mirror you see death at work"—and thanks so much for that, Jean!

Why should TDE be any different?

On that happy thought...back to your scheduled whimsies!

My currently posted sonnet is not a disguised description of TDE's moribund state...

Several weeks ago, I considered proposing consolidation of the boards. That was after I got beaten up at Metrical for assuming (after long absence) that there was still a qualitative difference between them. I was mistaken.

The original idea was to devote one board to metrical seminar, oriented more to beginners, and the other to discussion of work by accomplished metrists.

Erato has a lot more accomplished metrists than it used to. I could speculate on various reasons for this, all of them pleasing.

At the least, marquee adjustment is advisable, and it may be that TDE is undergoing an identity crisis of sorts.

Alan

But Alan, if we consolidated the boards, where would Mark post?

Mark, you are the soul of kindness, but I'm okay with subjecting my work to tough criticism. A Famous Writer once told me never to touch a keyboard again, and after crying, drinking, considering suicide, drinking some more, passing out, and waking up, I wrote the equivalent of "Frak You, Famous Writer" in big, black letters on a sheet of paper, taped it above my desk, and got back to work. However, to use your medical analogy, if I had a toothache I would not make an appointment with my family physician, I'd call my dentist. Though I had hoped to find jazz-like prosodic sophistication, an adventurous spirit, I can see that TDE gang are not the right specialists for me, though I certainly have learned a lot while lurking over there.

I'll end with the last stanza of Andrew Hudgins' "The Children" from Ecstatic in the Poison:

Next week we each brought in a shy
young poem, its pink face slapped,
its hair slicked back, its blubbering
half-soothed. It sang. We clapped--
applauded dutifully and long,
encouraged it, admired
its spirit. Then down to business: knives,
whisky, gunshots fired.

Cheers,
Lee

Apparently, in the midst of all the keening and other expressive forms of grief at TDE's demise, no one's bothered to look closely enough to read the note TDE left:

http://www.itisnet.com/jpg/netphotos...mbodia/cat.jpg



[This message has been edited by Howard (edited November 18, 2006).]

I haven't been around since The Beginning of Time, and so I can only guess, but if in an earlier time there was a steadier stream of beginners, maybe the real question is, Why has that stream dried? Or has it been diverted? Or is this, too, part of the random variation?

It would be an excellent thing if members who post rarely, or who haven't summoned the courage to post much yet, would answer this one.

Maryann

Maryann, I think I can clarify that one. While Alan is correct that we considered having a beginner's board when the volume became too great for one metrical board (if you missed a day a new poem could slip to the second page before you even saw it, let alone commented to it, and no poem stayed around long enough for serious critique or revision), we never actually had one. We knew we needed to split the board, but we weren't sure whether to make the boards alike or have each with a slightly different focus. We even took a poll to see how members would like to have us name the boards.

We considered the Deep End and the Shallow End or Kiddie Pool, but in the end we decided against a beginner's forum because Erato is not a beginner's board. We bill ourselves as a senior workshop and don't feel that we can be all things to all people. The internet is full of beginner's boards.

We considered Met I and Met II (and Met III), but since we had fixed moderators, we didn't think there would be much mingling between one and the other. If you wanted a certain mod or the people who hung out on a particular forum to comment, you'd post to that forum. People from the neighboring board wouldn't see or comment.

In the end we decided to divide along the lines of skin thickness, and set up The Deep End as a forum for those looking for more advanced and more exacting critique and Met as pretty much the same but less so. If there is any practical difference it is probably that the crits in Metrical may be worded in a kinder, gentler fashion, acknowledging that a member may be new to writing metrical poetry even though he isn't new to writing, and may be looking for some help with the basics, and that all of us post poems in varying levels of completion, some of which may not be ready for the extra-picky scrutiny they would get on The Deep End. You choose your depth and your distance.

The idea got around that anybody who was anybody posted to TDE, so TDE got busy (often with problem-riddled drafts posted by incompetent poets) while Met slowed to a crawl. Some members employed a reverse snobbery and posted only to Metrical. I guess there's no ideal division, but Met seems to be enjoying a boost in popularity right now while TDE is momentarily in the doldrums. I just hope it doesn't mean we're becoming kinder and gentler at the expense of honest critique or that we've suddenly all become thin-skinned.

Carol

To clarify, in light of Carol's comments, when I said "beginners" I meant "metrical beginners," not "novice poets." I think there is now a larger pool of poets with some metrical experience and facility than there was in the early days of Erato. Someone may want to debate this point, but I get the impression there is also now less reflexive rejection of meter than there used to be in the po-biz.

Alan