Just to say... I am enormously grateful to the Sphere for what it has given me over the years. I do feel my poetry has improved in certain craft-related ways because of the incredibly demanding critiques here.
I also think there are lulls in Sphere participation--although I'm struck by all the good poets taking part in this discussion! However, I do believe the quality and energy of poems posted goes up and down. (Drills and Amusements is the exception. Always brilliant!)
I have been off Sphere for a while largely because of demands in my "other" life. I think David Rosenthal put it well a few posts back. And yes, as Rick said, being on Sphere is "exhausting." I used to spend huge amounts of time critiquing. Posting a poem also takes energy, since one needs to respond thoughtfully to comments made by others, and so on. I also haven't written that much poetry lately.... well, it's just one of those times... And I agree that Facebook has eaten into Sphere-time.
One last comment. Editors DO scour the web when good poems come in, and they are very strict about rejecting poems that appear there in any form. That said, my Rattle poem was workshopped here originally, but I'm sure that by the time Tim Green accepted it, it had been cleaned off the Sphere, since that's the system. And it's a good system. However, if your poem has been caught by Google, it does stay there for a good few months.
BUT I also discovered that if you give the poem another title on the thread page--I mean, different from the title that appears with the poem, it's very unlikely that your poem will appear in any form on Google. I started doing that regularly a few years ago, and it worked! (I'd be curious to know if that didn't work for anyone.)
Charlotte
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