From Boards to Blogs; Need Your Help with a Poem

It seems to me that earlier on the net workshop boards or participatory listservs were the favored method of rubbing shoulders with other poets. I don't know how the boards are doing now; there are likely many poets entering the porthole of Net poetry through their auspices. Still, I think I've witnessed a migration of poets from boards to blogs. I am one who came late to the idea, but here I am. To where the next migration will be, I don't know; the direction I'd prefer is that quality e-zines became a coveted credit not only on the Internet but in the dead tree world as well.

I got a head's up on this today. I had called Ygdrasil an "e-zine" in a letter to its editor, Klaus Gerken, and he corrected me, calling it a "journal." That distinction is important for him because he feels "e-zine" is too dismissive a moniker for good electronic journals. His attitude is admirable.

Even more than self-respect we need critics. Until we have a healthy amount of astute literary criticism on and about the Net, we will not have the kind of baptism needed to validate our worth to the print world. Rob Mackenzie and Ron Silliman are two bloggers who are also good critics of poetry, but neither is attached directly to a journal to my knowledge.

In between considerable househusband duties, I finished my preliminary organization of the majority of all poems I think worth preserving. Sorting out all the different versions over the years was tedious, but my goal is to have only one version of each poem when I'm done, while having deleted all poems I don't think worth preserving.

Here's a poem with alternate endings. I need your advice on which one to leave in the poem. You don't have to be a writer to give me your opinion!


At the Lincoln Memorial

"If I could save the Union by freeing the slaves, I would;
If I could save the Union by not freeing the slaves, I would.”

Up three tiers of steps--
your mammoth shoe at eye level.
Gargantuan hands rest easy now.
Folds of robes flow from your throne
in static waterfall, a Greek convention
in American marble.

Your face looks younger
than the face from books--
the brochure explains
the sculptor used your death mask.

Your eyes, so often scored by laughter
now stare grimly across the reflecting pool
at that less human monument
of Washington, your father:
He the machine, you the Christ
embalmed in stone under cool portico,
resurrected in cold recall.

First ending:

Ah, Honest Abe, tell us a joke
to humanize your face!
The one about Grant
and the whiskey would do.
I envy the sculptor who made you—
How good to carve a homely man
made beautiful by suffering.

Second ending:

Ah, Honest Abe, tell us a joke
to humanize your face!
The one about Grant
and the whiskey would do.
You would likely laugh
at your marmoreal apotheosis;
besides, it seems unfair
when, after black humor,
justice was your strong suit.

(Published in one version in the Adirondack Review and the Susquhenna Quarterly. The archive for Adirondack is not available and the Susquehanna Quarterly I couldn't find in the first 50 references on Google. Could this mean two more depublications?)

How will the LitNet garner any respect when journals don't maintain archives?

I know you'll all weigh in with your wisdom on the poem.


At 0.5 kilorats,

CE