18 AUG 06

I started this blog on the 23rd of August 2005. I've put up a post every other day since then, until this past Wednesday when I finally missed one.

It's been a rigorous and beautiful week for me, and I had the opportunity to talk with a surprising number of people. Several of them mentioned that my blog looked kind of interesting but they couldn't quite get what was going on. (As in: Is that you talking? Are those your pictures? What are all those names? I don't understand how to get around and find things.)

Well, not everyone who comes here is a regular reader of blogs. Also, this blog is maybe more like a scrapbook than a journal. If you arrive on a first-book interview day, it might be puzzling. (Find a brief explanation here of how that started; they'll continue to appear until my own first book comes out around the middle of September. The growing list of interviewees is in the right column on the index and archives pages. Everything red is a link.)

The basics: I post an entry of some kind every other day (hence the name of the blog). The address is kickingwind.com--I'll change the blog name if I decide to alter the posting pattern. For now, it's "eod" for short. It is essentially a poetry blog, that's the community I feel I've joined, but I don't have much talent or appetite for criticism. Sometimes I post the work of writers I'm reading; a red asterisk, when clicked, will take you to further information, possibly a place to buy the book.

Links to a selection of other poetry blogs are listed down the right side of the index and archives pages, under the list of first-book interviews. Yes, if you click on those you will go someplace else.

There's a link to the archives index under the calendar (on the index and archives pages) for the current month. White numbers in the calendar link to the posts for those dates, as do the black dates at the top of each post. If you had the time and curiosity, you could view every post I've made, chronologically, by starting with the bottom link on the archives index page and reading each page from the bottom up. (My niece, a new blogger herself, actually did this recently, amazing me.)

I generally like each post to include some form of illustration, often photographic, usually shot by me, once in a while by Max (a "real" photographer, my husband, and occasional guest blogger). I've made a string of entries related to photography--some about my own relationship to taking pictures: here, here, here, and here (not complete, as I haven't spoken yet of digital cameras, which have changed everything for me and many bloggers I know).

I'll post notes of various kinds from things I'm reading, such as these 2 entries based on Photography Speaks. If I use photos from books, it tends to be obvious from the way the book has been scanned--in this example, if you keep clicking on the picture, you will move through a short series of images ending back on the original page. I do that sometimes to provide more information. (Here is another click-through, of my own photos.) I often scan or photograph details of paintings I'm working on and I've gotten into making drawings in the computer as well--so yes, most of the pictures are mine, unless I indicate in the alt text that they aren't.

Sometimes a series emerges: Seven Sentences, for instance (see explanation here). The most recent one is here. The words "14 sentences" or "28 sentences" at the beginning of these are links that will take you back to the previous one.

Entries from 6 Oct 05, 8 Oct 05, and 9 Nov 05 offer some early thoughts about blogging.

. . . .

eod archives
kickingwind home