Post by Will DockeryPost by George DancePost by Will DockeryPost by George Dance"Betty's OS - Acknowledgements"
http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2010/06/acknowledgements.html
Okay, I'll have a look... I admit this "Betty" poem is kind of boring
to me. and haven't followed it all.
You don't really have to go there.
No offense, of course... I've tried several times with this version of
Betty & it just never rings my bell...
Post by George DanceIt is important, though, for those
who are following the saga to know exactly where the os's came from,
rather than believing some of the nonsense that gets tossed around
here.
Well, sometimes reading /about/ the work is more entertaining than the
actual work, to me.
Well, put. I like reading/hearing and writing/talking more about the
writing process than the finished work. In fact, I think it's one of
the benefits of aapc to me: I'd much rather hear someone talk about
how he or she composed something, what he or she did, than have them
try telling me what I should do (which of course tends to be entirely
different), and I think I can learn more from it.
You know, that could be one reason poets often react negatively to
criticism of a work; not because they think it's such a great work,
but because it looks to them as if the critic's just not getting it;
that not having been around for the writing process, and knowing
nothing of it, he's missing too much to understand the finished
product.
I don't know if I'd be interested in "Betty's OS" if it was someone
else's, but certainly got me under its spell. Let me talk about what
I've been doing on it lately.
I finished up putting the links on today: about 90%-95% of the OS's
are live-linked now, and I think that due to diminishing returns I'll
leave it like that rather than go for 100%. And it's about time; I've
been on that for more than 2 weeks.
One reason it took so long, was that I kept finding new lists, with
new softwares to go on the net (that's what I wanted to show with the
"Acknowledgements" link). I had so many to go in, that I essentially
had to rewrite the whole thing.
That's what I did for most of today. It's a fun process: the trick is
to treat each line, 1 at a time, reading both quietly and out loud.
The only editing tool one has is to cut softwares -- cutting a
software moves all the reast from the end o a line to the front, and
vice versa, and pairs them up in a different way. Most of those are
serviceable; the trick is to look for really good-sounding and really
bad-sounding lines, and cut so that all the former and none of he
latter are in.
(I keep the cut nouns in a list at the bottom of the Document file.
They give you a second tool: Now, in some cases, you can rearrange the
lines by adding one in as well as taking one out.) I ended up with a
file of 39 cut os's.
When I'd finished that, I had to repost the new versions over to blog,
as new edits of the original. I kept track of the number of new lines
I added: I ended up adding 313. That's 626 new OS's, not counting the
39 I didn't use. So the poem's substantially bigger now. (I'll be
doing a final line count tonight and tomorrow).
Of course, that's all just a side benefit of the new edition project.
I verified that I have the capability to post the Documents with the
links intact; and that's what I'll be posting onto the blog in August.
Tomorrow or late tonight I'll be announcing that new edition on the
blog. It'll be the first step in adding value to the Bettyworks; I
plan to do it to all 3 (including the one I haven't written yet). I've
even got a name for these new editions - Enhanced Editions - and one
for this particular one; its title will be, "Betty's OS 2.0" (BOS2.0).
So that's what's left to do on it; the word count tonight, the promo
on the blog tomorrow, and posting BOS2.0 itself in August. That's
kinda neat, since every other month's archives is turning into a
special collection: Betty's Hat in Dec., Stevens' Notes Toward a
Supreme Fiction in Feb., April magazine in Apr., the original Betty's
OS in June, and now 2.0 in Aug.
Post by Will DockeryPost by George DanceOnce you're on the blog, as well, you can see that there's other
things happening than Betty's OS. I have a great bunch of sonnets from
Millay, the first of which went on today; and I've recently discovered
Elinor Wylie, another talent I'd never heard of - I blogged a couple
of her poems this week. That's all on the main page,http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/
Ah, yes... I know there's some great stuff on your blog, & haven't
been there in a while, perhaps when I return later tonight I'll have
the time for a look-see.
The thing is, I've been reading a poem a day for decades; and I've
read a lot of great poetry that way. Now, by shifting my focus to
reading only stuff that is p.d. in Canada and little known on the Net,
whenever I find a good poem, I can and do blog it. It's as much (if
not more) of a poetry reader's blog as (than) it is a writer's blog;
that's what I'd be doing with it even if I stopped trying to write my
own work completely.
Sadly, I enjoy working on that so much, I'd rather spend the day doing
it than f*** around on the alt. groups. That's one reason I decided to
publish the whole of "Betty's OS" back onto usenet during this whole
rewrite process: just so I'd continue to have some of presence on my
usenet and google poetry groups.
Post by Will Dockery--
http://www.myspace.com/willdockery
http://www.artemisrecords.net/dockeryconley.html