On the whole, it’s been good being out of the loop with regard to social media and the poetry scene. That said, the occasional catch up foray onto facebook can sometimes reveal that someone you knew and admired had passed away and that you had also missed the funeral and all those attendant chances to celebrate their life with others. This is how I learned of the death of one of my poetic namesakes, Niall McDevitt....

Comment I ended up not posting on a thread on another platform about poetry and whether poems should be skimmable: Is there any other way to read a Frank O’Hara poem, for instance, than skimming it? I often think multiple skims of his work render more meaning than the pinned down aspect of a close read. The pace and energy of the poem is as much a part of understanding it, much like Slow, Slow, Fresh Fount by Johnson intentionally slows the reader down....