The best thing about this blog is that it exists. Which is to say, it is better to have a blog that serves as a creative outlet and forum which may need fixing and tightening, than to have no forum at all. This site started as an adjunct to my attempts to self-learn Attic Greek. My failures as an autodidact aside, it quickly became clear that I didn’t have time to maintain this site and so it languished for several years as I took a more traditional approach to beefing up my education. Now, here we are several (okay, many) years later, and I have resurrected this blog as a means of personal literary expression. Which is shorthand for this is now a writer’s blog, and I as a writer intend to write… here. But what am I writing? I guess that remains to be seen.
It’s clear that I don’t really know what I am doing here, most of the time. Just look around, things are all over the place. It’s not that I have some overriding concern I’d like to examine to the nth degree; like the historical nuances of Iron Age Time Keeping or How to Make a Fortune Convincing Others to Buy Crypto. I did have that when this was a blog about Ancient Greek, but what has it become? What am I even doing here? Finding my voice is the best way that I can state it, and it looks to be an ongoing process, and one that threatens to expand into many different modes and forms of expression.
All I can say in my defense is that, while I may not know exactly what I am doing, I do know, more or less, where I am headed. I am moving forward, groping in the darkness, and looking for signs of light and life. I am writing. I am exploring. And mostly, I have just been keeping it to myself… or else presenting it in an ephemeral manner on social media. I have found the wherewithal to write daily, or nearly daily. I keep a journal that has little to do with this space, until, that is, something pops out and demands a hearing. I need an outlet for those occasional flashes of inspiration, which I do actually manage to inveigle from the spirits once in a while. I need a place to work out larger ideas and themes as well, presenting my research as it were. I do also need some outside structure and limit pressuring me to write for an actual audience, real or imagined. That is, I guess, why I have a blog; at least this blog, let’s just leave the others out of it for the time being.
… readers can expect to see new poems and poetic fragments of works in progress being posted here as the work continues… Other, more detailed examinations, in an academic or philosophical style, may appear from time to time as well, but I would like to avoid overly long and highly detailed studies for the time being.
I am mercurial ☿ by nature. I follow the wind where it listeth. Today, I might be working on poetry; tomorrow, I might actually be looking into some of those historical nuances I poked fun at earlier. But even while I am finding my voice, my public voice, I intend to keep this blog going. Not because anyone needs a record of my musings, but because I think that they might be entertaining and even sometimes valuable or well-crafted. And I need it. I need it as a spur to continue to improve and dare to put things out there for someone to maybe read. Sapere aude, or, maybe I should say, scriptare aude.
But I also understand the exigencies of keeping an audience engaged. I don’t want to make this an exercise in confusion or self indulgence, a shotgun approach to literary accomplishment. So, I intend to forge and keep a few themes that I can return to over and again, and give you all, whomever you might eventually turn out to be, something to hang your hats on. A little stability in an unstable world.
So, here are my proposals. For one thing I intend to keep working in a poetic mode, at least periodically, for the foreseeable future. With this in mind you readers can expect to see new poems and poetic fragments of works in progress being posted here as the work continues. But I am interested in prose, too. With that aspect in mind I would at least like to feature a regular series of posts just on my interests at large as they present themselves during any given week. Maybe that means a travel report, or some commentary on world events, or just going down the rabbit hole on some subject that has captured my attention; not unlike this post itself, for example. The news of the day as my mind reads it, so to speak, and definitely from a subjective point of view.
Other, more detailed examinations, in an academic or philosophical style, may appear from time to time as well, but I would like to avoid overly long and highly detailed studies for the time being. I have other venues for that sort of examination, and if it is not of general interest, don’t expect to see it here. While this blog did start out – or at least restart – in an academic mode, it did so merely as a vehicle of convenience. I needed a place to post my work for a class on the history of the book and so I did it here. Now, I want to shift gears away from academics, though I may return to such topics, more casually , from time to time.
Finally, I would like to post some thoughts or brief biographical materials together on authors and their works as I encounter them. I have been making it a point to read much more fiction that I am normally accustomed to, and I would like to examine those items here. Such literature reviews will concern authors that I find interesting in whatever aspect, genre, or medium, I encounter their work. Hopefully, I will dig into such works while I am still reading them and they are fresh in my mind. I will especially seek to focus on authors about whom I wish to discover more myself; I can then share my findings and recommendations with you. So, look forward to that if you are a book lover, as I have been reading some excellent and somewhat obscure authors of late in a variety of genres as well as my usual staples of history and nonfiction.
Well, that is all I have to say on the subject of subjects. I hope to be a more active poster in the future now that I have some working parameters, and I hope if you visit here you will follow this blog and return from time to time to see what’s new.
Thanks for visiting,
Wm. J.
Logomancy 