As a grateful but mostly lapsed Spherean, I feel I ought to contribute to this thread. First of all, I’m enormously thankful to Alex for all he’s done for us. Also, I second Quincy’s post: the value of this forum changes over time—corresponding to changes in a poet’s publishing history, his/her professional and personal life, and his/her opportunities for non-cyber workshopping. I also second Siham’s comment about the time factor; my family and my job have demanded an awful lot of both my time and my psyche in recent years. And I agree with Rick that full engagement with the Sphere can be exhausting.
So I have nothing to add, really. I do want to emphasize that my first couple of years on the Sphere provided incredibly valuable conversation, support, critique, and opportunities to critique, for which I’ll always be very grateful. I still turn to the Sphere for conversation from time to time, and yes, to brag. I really value the sense of community that I still find here, despite my failure to contribute regularly. Within most of the communities to which I belong, no one has a clue why I spend so many hours staring at a single line of words, occasionally changing one—or even knows that I do—and I do like associating with other odd folks who do such things. So despite the occasional nonsense here, I thank you all
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