14th Blogiversary

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Fourteen years ago, on February 27, 2005, I began blogging at J's Theater. I was regularly reading the blogs of friends and writers, artists, political commentators, and others I'd never met but felt a desire to be in conversation with, and so I started this blog. I viewed it as a creative and cultural space, with far less emphasis on politics and responsive to the news cycle--which has sped up incalculably more these days now that Facebook and Twitter have taken off--than it has assumed at various points. More than anything, however I wanted it to be a site where I could try thoughts and ideas out, imperfect as they might be, without the usual concern of perfection or even the struggle, customary as well, to get them into print. (My entire writing career has entailed a struggle to get my work into print.)

From writing about poetry and poets, like Jay Wright, as I did in my first post, to my life and experiences at the university (which has become a new university over the years I've blogged), to reviews of books and films, to snippets about Black history, art and culture, and history, art and culture over all, to translations from Portuguese, Spanish, French, and, I sometimes am amazed to admit, Dutch and German, to posts about rugby, track and field and other less popular (in the US imagination, at least) sports, my iPhone and iPad sketches, and on and on, J's Theater has provided an ideal space for me to explore, (mostly--haha!) pressure-free, as I see fit. It also has served as a site of documentation at times for cultural activities, and especially was so during my decade in Chicago, which wasn't even a decade ago but feels like a lifetime has passed between then and now.

I've repeatedly debated whether to keep blogging or to quit. One great frustration after the earliest years (2005-2008 or so) was the sharp drop off in comments, which were for a while replaced by spam, which disappeared (thanks, Blogger?), only to reappear in recent years with a vengeance. It thankfully is very easy to delete these days, but that requires its own dedicated attention. Far more pressing were my academic responsibilities, which have grown to include 12-month administrative duties that devour more mental space and energy than I ever imagined. I don't think it's any surprise that before this year, 2014, the first year I became a department chair (acting during that year) and 2017, just before my last sabbatical, saw the fewest posts. It was not for lack of interest, but time and vigor.

Not so long ago, we were told that blogging was dead. No one blogged, everyone had moved to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. And Tumblr, which was and is a blogging platform that in essence mostly deprioritized words. (It also has banned not just pornography, but nudity in general, that's another matter.) And Instagram, which is all pictures (for the most part). And Snapchat, of course. Now there's Tiktok, and other walled gardens. One thing I loved and still do about blogging (though to its credit, Twitter also is almost fully public) via Blogger, WordPress and similar sites is that whatever you published was and remains visible to all; a private company does own this platform, but the blog remains more a public square-style venue than many other options out there. For good and ill, of course. The dazzlingly brilliant Kegur'o M, who continues to blog at Gukira: Without Predicates, is a stellar example of the good that can come from a blogger at the top of their game.

But that public aspect is one that I cherish, and one reason I hope to continue blogging. I also wish some of my old blogging friends, many listed on the blogroll to the right, and other bloggers I never interacted with but who've given up blogging, would start up again. No shade against Medium, but before ideas are fully polished, why not bounce them off readers on a blog? You can always--well, so far--revise as you go.

J's Theater's 13th Blogiversary

A screenshot of my very
first post, from February
27, 2005 (Copyright © J's Theater)

On this date thirteen years ago, I started blogging at J's Theater. I've previously commemorated the date and written about why I began writing on this platform. In those and other posts, I discussed how my approach has changed over the years, and I've also commented a number of times about the fluctuation in the regularity of my posts. In brief: my teaching, mentoring and advising, and, in more recent years, administrative duties have sometimes led to sizable hiatuses or periods of silence. I've nevertheless tried to keep the blog going, in part because I enjoy blogging and it provides me with one of the few places to regularly and publicly share interests I have, especially if they fall outside the mainstream. What sometimes astonishes me is how much ground I've covered over the years, which includes posts I've completely forgotten about only to happen upon them when Googling some topic or other, and find that the blog is among the top links that appear.

From time to time, I with meet or speak with someone who speaks about the blog as primarily political, but rereading my posts since 2005, what stands out to me is the emphasis on culture, with cultural politics usually part of the equation. During my first year of blogging, which included 305 posts, I ranged widely, touching upon not only poetry and poets but artists, but also drawings and photos (many via Flickr, or from the web, so they're no longer visible); reviews of films, dancing performances, art shows, CDs and online audio sites, TV shows, plays; sports (primarily baseball, reports on the literary world and publishing industry; interviews, with domestic and international figures; numerous translations, by many others as well as my own original attempts; meta-commentaries on other bloggers and blogs; announcements of upcoming local and national events; obituaries and tributes; countless quotes by notable figures; random photos (always a popular feature here); and yes, discussions of politics. I've tried to maintain many of these foci over the years, the combinations changing in relation to my life at the time, while adding new ones. I probably do write less about TV and popular culture than I once did, and many of my favorite bloggers unfortunately have put their efforts to pasture or are no longer with us. There have also been strange occurrences, such as other blogs basically plagiarizing my posts and featuring them under other names; the specifics of the entries, however, makes the theft a bit nonsensical, but when has that ever stopped thieves?

What also continues to amaze me is how many people have visited the blog. According to the stat counter (which I had to reinstall when transferring J's Theater to Blogger's new platform) 745,059 people have visited the blog over the years. Blogger's analytics tell me, however, that there have been 1,061,061 (!) viewers over the lifetime of the blog. Last month, there were 29,566. The all-time most popular post remains the Julia de Burgos poem page (61,822 views), followed by my post about Vanessa Place and conceptual poetics (12,475); an entry on Allen Ginsberg (6,340); the 2007 Rugby World Cup (5,264); and my review of Christophe Honoré's film Homme au bain (4,147). Over this last week, the most read posts remain the one about de Burgos and Place, as well as one on William Butler Yeats and Federico García Lorca; the post about the new Locke biography and the Richard T. Greener statue, and my review of Inxeba (The Wound). Over the life of the blog, the most visitors have come from the US (556,277), Russia (92,407), Germany (54,849), France, Great Britain, Ukraine, Canada, China, Brazil, and the Netherlands, in descending order; over the last month, the visitors have primarily come from the same countries, with Italy, Estonia and Poland replacing Canada, China and Brazil. In sum, visitors from across the globe are checking out the new posts and some very old ones, which is heartening to see.

I intend to continue blogging for as long as it remains of interest and I have the time and energy to do so. At some point I probably should see if I can hire an assistant to cull through the posts and draw up a list categorizing and indexing them by date, subject, and so on. I am not sure how many translations of my own I've posted on here, but I often find ones I'd completely forgotten, including an entry featuring a poem by the late Dominican-immigrant writer Carlos Rodríguez (1951-2001). To my surprise, someone commented on the post this past January 16, under the title "Escritor de la nada," to say that there's an anthology out featuring 4-5 poems by Rodríguez was now out. They did not leave a name, but I have put on my list of books to seek out.

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It's also a little surprising, at least to me, to note that blogging as we know it is roughly only 21 years old. I noted the 10th anniversary of the platform and genre back in 2007. Perhaps it was around this time or not long after that some pundits began declaring blogging over and done, and yet just a few years after that, it had come back with such force that reality shows were touting the fact the some of their stars' occupations included "blogger." "The blogs" even became an epithet of sorts. Blogging has morphed several times since, with platforms like Tumblr including blogs with almost no words at all. There are still many wordsmiths still toiling out there, and, in the case of publications like The New York Review of Books, some of their more vital, relevant writing is appearing on their blog, NYR Daily.

In 2005, I also wrote about one of the important proto-bloggers, Clarice Lispector, whose formally inventive and topically expansive newspaper Crônicas are more like blogposts and less like the conventional opinion pieces one usually finds in contemporary US journalism. New Directions plans to publish one her most difficult and personal books, The Chandelier, later this spring.

Fourth of July Poem: Jay Wright

Jay Wright at Rutgers-
New Brunswick, 2006

In place of a prose post about the Fourth of July, I thought I'd cede the space to a poet: Jay Wright (1935-). My very first post on this blog, 11 years ago, was a tribute to him when he received the Bollingen Prize, and I often think that I should post his poetry more, and occasionally have done so, but the ones I want to post tend to be quite long. 

Here's a poem from his début book, The Homecoming Singer (Corinth, 1971), which was reprinted in Transfigurations (LSU Press, 2000), a volume that should have received the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics' Circle Award, and every other major poetic honor. History will, I hope, be the ultimate judge in favor of his greatness; the poems are the testimony. 

"Crispus Attucks" is Wright's meditation on the Revolutionary War hero, who the first person to die in this country's first, decisive battle for freedom. A few years ago, while conducting research for a novel, I came across John Adams's dismissive description of Attucks, which was part of his trial defense of the British soldiers who killed the patriots during the Boston Massacre. 

Twenty years before, as that post also reveals, Attucks had run away from his master in Framingham; clearly freedom was on his mind, or as Wright calls it, the prelude to his "impulsive miracle." This was also his personal and mortal sacrifice, which helped this country to achieve the liberty it trumpets to the entire world. Too often, as Wright makes clear, we forget its first architect. Let's honor him today.

Crispus Attucks

CRISPUS ATTUCKS

When we speak

of those musket-draped

and manqué Englishman;

that cloistered country;

all those common people,

dotting the potted stoves,

hating the king,

shifting uneasily under

the sharp sails

of the unwelcome boats,

sometimes we forget you.

Who asked you

for that impulsive miracle?

I form it now,

with my own motives.

The flag dipping in your hands,

your crafted boots

hammering up the unclaimed streets,

all that was in that unformed moment.

But it wasn't the feel of those things,

nor the burden of the American character;

it was somehow the sense

of an unencumbered escape,

the breaking of a Protestant host,

the ambiguous, detached

judgment of yourself.

Now, we think of you,

when, through the sibilant streets,

another season drums

your intense, communal daring.

Copyright © Jay Wright, 1971, 2000. From Transfigurations: Collected Poems, Louisiana University Press, 2000. All rights reserved.

Poem: Jay Wright

"The Liatris has become Athenian,
a sacred grain, mark of a girl who dreams
perfection, the immutable extremes,
almost a strategy without a text.
What must the ascetic self, Marian
in its depths, understand by such a vexed
disposition of minor stars, canon
bound, all too discursive, all too common?
The infinite must endure unfolding,
or, as some might say, a blessed descent.
Think augury in premises, whirling
bodies ontologically content.
Qué muerte tan larga...you must forgive
the way I hold my memory, string
my questions upon an air that seems bent
with an ambition that remains furtive."

-- Copyright © 2.17 "The Liatris has become Athenian," by Jay Wright, from Disorientations: Groundings, Chicago: Flood Editions, 2013. All rights reserved.

Jay Wright, teaching in the
Poetry-in-the-Schools program
(Poets.org)