And now, for something completely different

http://duplications.blogspot.com/

...this is a poetry blog that encourages submissions; the poems herein are from a different poetic school than what I've been harping on. Punctuation and immediate sense are not the objectives here.

...I rather enjoy reading poetry like this now and again--these poems tend to have more emergent properties, in that there isn't really a feeling that there's one key that unlocks just one lock.

I worry sometimes that poetry of this sort encourages writers to write down--well--anything, string it out a few words per line, and say "new poem!" I don't really want to get into the whole "what is poetry" debate, but I will say that what is clear to me about language poetry and other more avant-garde avenues is that these poems often say new and bizarre and lovely things--so, stringing out a boring old sentence may "look" like a language poem on the surface, but will probably suffer from lack of depth, curiousity, wit, newness, and cleverness. Language poems keep language alive by poking and prodding and slamming odds and ends together, and by stretching in a way that a poem with a narrative or plot to stick to cannot. If this is your poetic avenue, enjoy the above site!

Dani