* Congrats to John & Belle on the birth of their new daughter, “Violet Mai”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/04/little_mai.html. It’s weird how I’m a total sucker for baby pictures now.
* Check out the new “art blog”:http://www.edheil.com/artwork/ of . . . a fine blogger and friend who prefers not to have explicit, web-linky lines drawn from his regular blog to his art blog. But if you head over there you should be able to figure it out who it is.
* Let me second Gary Farber’s “complaint”:http://www.amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_amygdalagf_archive.html#108319587824877650 against group blogs. Not those blogs that are conceived as group efforts, but those that toss in guest writers to increase posting frequency, thereby losing the individual voice that drew you there in the first place. Like the man says:

And you growl to yourself, as you have so many times before, that what you value about blogs, what makes them worthwhile to you, why you spend so much time with them is that they are individual voices. You become friends, in your own mind, at least, with the voice, because it speaks uniquely, has its own view, speaks in its own manner, says what it wants to say in the way that only it would.

* This is a couple weeks old now, but Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s “Things I believe”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005007.html#005007 is very fine.
* There’s no doubt that “Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/ is the best blog I’m reading right now. He doesn’t indulge in personal narrative all that often, but when he does, “it’s groovy”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/04/pink_fountains.html.
* Aaron Haspel tackles the whole “difference between poetry and prose”:http://www.godofthemachine.com/archives/00000543.html question with his usual aplomb. He’s a little hard on free verse, but that’s OK by me. Anyone who presumes to study, teach, or write about poetry should be able to analyze scansion the way that he does with _To a Dead Journalist_; I wonder how many of them actually can. “Jim Henley”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_04_25.html#005296 beat me to the punch with some comments, but he expressed them way better than I would have, so it’s just as well.
* Speaking of Jim: back in the old days (like, a year ago or so) he used to regularly post his poems on his blog. But it’s been a while since we’ve seen one. What gives, Jim? More poetry!