Monday, August 7, 2023
Saturday, August 5, 2023
The Canadian Cottage Garden, end of July 2023
It is just as I wanted it to be. To sit in the garden, surrounded by flowers, and on a hot summer day to have insects, wild bees, and butterflies going from flower to flower, busy with their work of pollination and collecting pollen and nectar.
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Poets' Web Sites
People buy books online from companies like Amazon.com. I doubt many poet's sites actually sell any books. Some poets PR their latest books on their sites, but how effective is this for selling books? As someone said to me, "if a million spam E-mails can bring in a few hundred orders, you will need maybe a thousand visitors a day to your site to sell only a few books, if any." Sixty or seventy visitors a day to a poetry site is pretty good, but it won't sell books. Poetry isn't a big seller at the best of times and your site isn't likely to change this.
This leaves a poet's site as both PR and educational outreach. What is effective, or interesting content, for a poet's site? My own feeling is that I want to put everything I've written regarding poetry online. Most of what we write reaches a small audience at best, so why not recycle this content onto our sites? The internet is a voracious publisher of content. I think of Allen Ginsberg's Deliberate Prose, Selected Essays 1952 - 1995 (New York, Perennial, 2000) as a model for what can be put online. Ginsberg's book is a collection of essays, short prose pieces, letters, odds and ends, and notes. Put some money aside in your will to keep your site online for as long as possible, sometimes a poet's work will become popular post mortem, but don't count on it.
I recommend Bill Knott's blog which is apparently the complete Bill Knott body of work, or something approaching it. Artie Gold gave me Knott's Nights of Naomi (Plus 2 Songs) (The Barn Dream Press, Massachusetts, 1971) back in the mid-1970s. It wasn't until the 1990s that I found Knott's Other Strangers Than Our Own, Selected Love Poems. Now, online, you can find Bill Knott's body of work. Of course, Knott retains his copyright, but anyone can access the work online. He's even presented his work so it can be printed in book form. Good for Bill Knott!
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Growing hostas
It is not that I like hostas that much but they grow in the shade and this is a fairly shaded garden, that's why I have so many hostas. I have always regretted the lack of full sunlight on this garden; in fact, I've spent a fair amount of time regretting the lack of sunlight on this garden but I've also come to accept it and even think it is perfect the way it is.
Hostas are easy to grow, they don't need much care (or any care), or any sunlight.
Friday, July 28, 2023
Hollyhocks at Loyola College
Photograph taken from the parking lot of what used to be Loyola College but is now part of Concordia University. For some reason, in recent years, these hollyhocks are cut down sometimes even before they bloom. This year they are a beautiful sight; sometimes I take seeds from these hollyhocks to grow them in my garden, but rarely with much success. Considering they are a fairly common flower, growing like weeds in this neighbourhood, I have little luck growing them.