Myspace And Poetry Technology.

Now, the poet Barbara Jane Reyes and I often trade quips over myspace and most of these social networking sites from friendster, asianavenue.com and any number of other up-and-comers who swear they're the next big thing.

If enough people sign onto it.

Having tried it for about a year now, I'm left of the opinion that Myspace probably works best for musicians, movies, visual artists, and would-be models and people writing within niche markets.

There's opportunities for poets, but at a smaller scale.

My myspace brought me into good contact with some new friends, but not so many I feel I couldn't have met them on my own.

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This week, Myspace deleted my account under as-yet undertermined causes: technical glitch, hacker, or some nutter with a crazy-mad hate-on for Bryan Thao Worra, etc.

This left me reconstructing a rudimentary build of the old site, but also confirms my overall *$!#! with the place.

Losing a year's worth of good blog posts because of the idiotic technical infrastructure there just leaves me... p!$$ed.

Posts covering everything from good soup recipes to Giacometti and Rodin, the meaning of ancient chinese texts to the famous Nak Roll... all gone, poof, no backup. %^$#!

So, while we'll keep doing things over at myspace for a little while longer, I'm going to say: You can expect far more of my regular content to be appearing here, where things are a lot more stable. *knock on wood.

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Still, this is where BJR would wheedle me and we must ask: What does this technology mean for poets?

Is it really on opportunity, or a distraction?

Can it help poets realize or recognize the possibility of becoming 'rock dieties' at last within our culture? Will we become the new Bonos thanks to myspace and youtube-style technologies? :P

And should that even be a goal of poets?

I hear some who more or less argue for a deeper intimacy, less flash and flamboyance, that we are more or less monks in our craft working at a more discrete level.

Who needs audiences of thousands or millions in the world?

And then again, for better or worse, mass media culture is creating zones of poetry, such as Def Poetry Jam, and the question is, if 'serious' poets don't take advantage or participate in the technology emerging around them, can they expect serious longevity?

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Which of course, presupposes that 'serious poets' should be concerned with 'serious longevity...' and that there are 'unserious poets' in the world who aren't concerned with such issues. But that's probably a discussion for another time.