I have been fooling around with a My Space page after hearing so much about how My Space helped Lily Allen promote her debut album. I, after all, have something appearing in the early part of next year (which must remain condidential for now), as well as a welter of old and new poems it would be nice to do something with. My "extended network" at My Space supposedly tops a million people, so that's a lot of reach, potentially.
My interest, to some extent, lies in how the internet can help a writer or poet circumvent the usual system of having to rely on other people publishing him or her to get work out to the audience--if there is an audience for poetry beyond the closed circle of those who write it, which I doubt. The web has, after all, dramatically changed how the music business works. Why shouldn't it have its impact on poetry? And I've got none of the romance many poets have about "keeping your work in the mail," or however Bukowski put it. I've had some success with that--not enough--but I tend not to believe the success any more than I believe the failure.
As for My Space, I'm not convinced it is any better, as a format for showcasing your writing, than Blogger, despite the fact that it is perceived as being vastly cooler and more modern. None of the free services are, unless you have the technical expertise of Domestic Empire over at John Peel Everyday and know how to adapt the site to your purposes. I am a technical idiot, as I have said here before. The last time I tried to rewrite the code for this page I wiped several months of writing.
You can locate my new site, if you have a spare moment, at:
http://www.myspace.com/deathrowdog
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