I have apparently been doing this pesbo blog for 20 years now. Some have tried to give it cachet and called in the Pesbo Journal. Take prestige if you need it.
And I have been doing book reviews in various places for 15 years.
Oddly the League of Canadian poets seems to have deleted their review archive and no longer offer member the option to get their books reviewed. Not that I’m a member anymore. Perhaps it’s behind a member paywall. At any rate I’ve pulled the reviews that used to be there and put them here as back posts on pesbo, all listed in the link above.
(The only good web host in your own damn server. Internet archive can’t do it all.)
Self-reliant is best. (Unless of course you back up to DVD which you then promptly lose, as in the case of a decade of my photos.) Apparently Flickr now believes it not for permanent storage. (Must find the largesse around the Arg.) Must stop shaking fist at clouds.
My goal for the last few years has been to review 10% of the titles read. I did it last year, nearly did it the year before.
By now, that would be about 24 reviews for 2025. And I am at 12 reviews.
So can I go for broke and do 12 more in 2 months? (I could add to the count one line raves at AO3. Hardly equivalent.) To keep pacing under my own control, I could do the remainder here, rather than a magazine that may plan 6 months or a year ahead. Am I talking to myself? Very well, am talking with myself.
The point of reading, writing, reviewing, living is the exploration and engagement, the being present and attentive, not the numbers racked up. (Kind of sounds like a relationship instead of collecting followers online doesn’t it. )
I want to go deeper rather than bigger.
I have been doing my small press since 2007. (That means it’s an adult press as of November.) I have been doing a reader’s log since 2012. Next year will be 14 years.
It’s funny how there are no constants in this chaotic universe. Sure, spiders have 8 legs, except when they’ve lost 3 and continue on. Water freezes at 0 degrees, unless salty. I read Feel Happier in nine seconds: poems by Linda Besner (Coach House, 2017) and I couldn’t enter it. I return the better part of a decade later and it isn’t hard. I has a sort of Eunoia about it. Constraints cinched hard. Still a pointing.
I read To Assemble an Absence by John Levy (above/ground, 2024) and was utterly wowed. How hadn’t read this before? Except I had 18 months before and it was kinda meh then. I wonder if I should reread Guest Book for People in My Dreams by John Levy (Proper Tales Press, 2024) and it too might improve from very good.
I dropped the spreadsheet tracking number of poems written. It’s muddy, one poem becoming another. There’s no clearly defined way to count.
Part of poetry is wondering how far you can push or pull (or drag) the rope. ~~~~~ Ceci n’est pas une corde.
I hope this fall and this spring I’ll publish with phafours press again. Maybe in 2027 I’ll go to Montreal and Toronto book fairs, although with 1/62 people in Ontario having Covid still I’m not super eager to travel. Except in pages.
Each title averages 135 pages, as opposed to 118 pages last year. I’m running 52% of reading list being free, whether library, little free library, gift, free download, or review copy. In comparison 67% last year, probably skewed by scuba dive through fan fiction. About 10% BIPOC against 9% last year.