more actual content?

Unauthorized this time, but yes!

Good ol' Statcounter, like a reliable hunting dog, tracked down ilikepoetry for me today. It's a "tumblr" - Jesus, the kids these days and their newfangled toys - run by "Mitch Mitchells" (pseudonym or cruel parents?), where he posts poems, by others, that he likes.

He's got some great poems up there, like Karen Solie's "Tractor" and Jeff Latosik's "Piñata". I'm quite flattered to have a couple of my poems up there as well, "The Same Thing" and "After the Game". Any day I find out someone read (and liked!) a poem of mine (or two!), is a very, very good day.

Clearly, Mr. Mitchells reads a lot of CanPo, as those poems of mine appeared in CV2 and Poetry is Dead, respectively, and I suspect the overlap in readership between the two is... well... me and Mr. Mitchells. You can view his full archive of poems here.



I'm torn about how to feel about sites like this one. I don't post others' poems on this site (though I'm often tempted) - if a poet wants to hoard their poems, that's their business, and their right. I often wonder, though, why poets are resistant to putting their poems online after they've sold the first-publishing rights (for the standard rate of a fist full of pocket change). Do they know of some lucrative second-publishing rights venue, and are keeping it a secret? Or do poets think that hoarding their poems will increase the value of their books? That's a model that's been proven wrong enough times, no? Don't make me bring up Radiohead, people!

All that said, when an unauthorized "tumbl" of one of your poems leads to it getting picked up and "tumbld" on a page as awesome as this, how can anyone complain?



Gonzalo Higuain gets all weak
in the knees around poetry.