A marketer and a poet weigh in--

"Building community one stanza at a time"

Despite the rumor that I loll all day in my golden bubble, dreaming and eating bon-bons, that bright imagination man Gary Dietz has included me in one of his 6by7 Reports as an example of a writer adapting to the changing world of publishing. Though I am sure he has been extra kind here, I am curious to see how writers in general and I in particular appear through his marketer's lens.

Here's a clip from the piece: "On her blog, amidst the wonderful discussions of her and others’ work you will find some of the best discussion and perspective of marketing challenges you can read from the persona of a successfully published writer in the midst of major changes in the markets." There's more, interesting to anyone who cares about the vagaries of publishing and the adaptation of writers.

Because I don't think of building a seaworthy craft of "readership" in quite this analytical way, I find it especially challenging. Writers area always interested in the gaps between one view and another, and here's one related to me and what I do. I can no doubt learn from it.

Mole continues looking at Thaliad

Poet Dale Favier has lodged a second installment in his thoughtful series on my epic adventure in verse, Thaliad, this time about a major loss in Chapter IV that shades the entire poem and the changes in Thalia. (His first post was a lovely introduction to what he called "a rapidly running, easy-to-follow narrative poem.")

I won't cut into what he has to say about "Gabriel the Weeper"; please take a look for yourself and see what you think. One small thing I especially like about this post--he's the first commentator to point out that the small, additional voice in the header glosses is different from the rest of the poem. I certainly meant it to have the feel of a later addition.

He ends with this sharp-tipped thought: "The deepest kinship of this epic, formal, emotional, and moral, is with the Aeneid. There comes a time, reading that poem, that an acute reader suddenly realizes that Augustus Caesar was sold a bill of goods, and that Virgil, despite all his show of politically correct patriotism, was not really sure that Rome should ever have been founded at all. A similar dismay and foreboding runs through the Thaliad: its beauty is wounded and dark, from beginning to end."

P. S. A thanks is due writer and seminary prof Wesley Hill

for re-posting a portion of my Athanasius (etc.) post in his tumblr log, Writing in the Dust. I've been glad to see a stream of readers coming from there logged in my stats. Thanks, Wes!