A Month of Poems

What follows is the result of reading and commenting on one poem by a different poet every day for a month. Why? My rationale, if you want to call it that, is explained in the preface. Now, on to the poems...

"What Happens to All Flesh" by Vincente Aleixandre
From Twenty Poems translated by Lewis Hyde and Robert Bly, Seventies Press 1977
[Friday, August 1st]

I don't remember reading this book when I got it, some 20-30 years ago, but I have dragged it around ever since. Perhaps because of Bly, who I respect as a translator. Perhaps because Aleixandre had won the Nobel Prize so I figured I ought to read it.

For whatever reason, reading it now I can see why I didn't spend much time with it back then. Aleixandre is interested in the temporal nature of human existence and what ties us together. Life and death -- these were topics that I enjoyed pondering when I was 18 or 20. But more in a theoretical, abstract way.

And as abstract as the concepts are, Aleixandre is anything but theoretical. His poems pull no punches when discussing the frailties of physical existence.

But now that I am what would be called middle-aged, "the sourceless ocean that sends out wave on wave" of human flesh is neither solely imagery nor unnecessarily harsh depiction for me. And Aleixandre's attempt -- and failure! -- to make peace with that reality strikes a chord.

30 years ago I would have been disappointed with the poem, that he didn't either leave it as objective narrative or manufacture some closure, some resolution, some light of hope. But now I appreciate the self-assurance, the bravery, that is required for him to face the sourceless ocean, recognize a faint spark, but not give in to false hope. There is a chance. It is possible that there are "full eyes that watch us". But he makes no promises and it is up to us to determine if that faint light is sufficient for our own lives.

"Coconuts" by Ray Amorosi
From Flim Flam , Lynx House Press 1980
[Saturday, August 2nd]

Ray Amorosi is an enigma to me. His poems intrigue me, but it is rare that I am ever completely satisfied with the whole poem. There is always some jarring image or reference that doesn't fit into the "story", so to speak.

"Coconuts" is an exception to the rule. But not in a good way. The poem doesn't have that one glaring interruption; instead, it is one long interruption to meaning.

Amorosi is what I would classify as an American neo-surrealist. Not a full blown surrealist like Philip Lamantia or Charles Henri Ford, but one of the generation (starting around 1960) who internalized surrealism and used it as one of their poetic techniques. His poems are sprinkled with the juxtapositions and impossibilities that make surrealism famous. But there is also usually a thread or narrative that holds the poem together.

The problem with "Coconuts" is that thread never seems to go anywhere. The surrealistic images keep taking you away from meaning rather than piling them up, like good surrealist poems do. The lines "Let's say / you slaughter the fragile child of a widow / and sit on a coconut" don't lead anywhere. The poem rolls out a recipe (literally) for brutality but never lets you connect it -- or the coconut -- to anything tangible, either physical or psychological.

Surrealism tends to provide footholds to understanding. Unexpected, jarring, sometimes difficult -- but images that surprisingly connect the poem to your experience. "Coconuts" is like facing a blank wall of words and images without those handholds. The poem is too personal, or simply to self involved, to let you as reader connect to it.

"Going to Norway" by Jack Anderson
From City Joys, Release Press 1975
[Sunday, August 3rd]

Jack Anderson writes in sentences. Nothing surprising there. We all do. Except there is very little other punctuation in his poems -- few commas, colons or other "breaths". He writes in short, deceptively direct sentences. This is what gives his poems a sort of syncopated feel, like a quick walk or someone thinking out loud.

I say deceptive because the poems are neatly planned out. They aren't the off-the-cuff musings they seem. But Anderson is an expert at making them appear that way.

"Going to Norway" keeps circling back on itself. Repeating sentences with only slight variations to tell a story. Although written in present tense, the story actually starts in the past and moves into the present -- ending with a strong hint of the future. But it is not until the end that you understand the whole thing. Until the circling gets large enough to see what is driving the motion.

"Lecture With Slides" by Jon Anderson
From Death & Friends, University of Pittsburgh Press 1970
[Monday, August 4th]

Jon Anderson is the exact opposite of Jack Anderson. Jon Anderson is a serious poet. (That is a descriptive, not a pejorative, term.) Each line, each sentence, is fully weighted with meaning. More meaning than you as reader can extract at first.

All poems deserve multiple readings (all good poems that is). Even Jack Anderson's seemingly off-hand writing carries nuances and secrets that require time to reveal. But his poems do provide an immediate pleasurable response.

Jon Anderson's poems not only require multiple readings to "open up" to the reader, they are so thick the reader almost needs to stop and take a breath after each sentence to let it all seep in. "Partially submerged in entrances, /the women are indistinct: dress, often / the color of dust. Happiness is not / important."

That is not to say Anderson is a "difficult" poet; he isn't. His poems provide immediate pleasure simply by the sound they make. But they do require concentration and the ability of the reader to bear the weight of the poems. And not everyone has that. In fact, even avid readers may not meet those requirements all the time.

Death & Friends is Anderson's second book. I haven't read any of his books since the third (In Sepia). I suspect I was a little worn out by the seriousness of it all. Even the titles of his books can be overbearing. But rereading this poem, I realize I have been missing something.

Quick process note: I thought I would have trouble selecting which poem to read each day, but it hasn't turned out that way. Rather than selecting, I am going almost by random selection. I pick all of the poet's books off the shelf, riffle through the pages until a page strikes me, then read that poem. I am deliberately not selecting my favorite or famous poems. I would rather read something new or forgotten, learn something I didn't already know about the poet.

"Windows" by Guillaume Apollinaire
From Calligramme translated by Anne Hyde Greet, University of California Press 1980
[Tuesday, August 5th]

I've never admitted it, but I don't like Apollinaire's poems. I haven't admitted it because I was waiting to reach some point where I might at least respect or admire them. But even while I recognize their position as precursors to Dada, Surrealism, and concrete poems, there is simply not enough in the finished product to deserve admiration. The poems are arty but clumsy, the shape poems are simplistic and childish (instead of child-like). So I recognize the poems as historical models, but little else.

One side note: I have two copies of these translations -- the more complete University of California edition and the earlier, shorter chapbook from the Unicorn Press French series (1970). The UCalif edition has the more traditional layout of original French and English translation on facing pages. The Unicorn edition has all of the translations together, followed by all of the originals. I understand the idea behind the Unicorn layout (so the reading of the poems is not interrupted, but that the originals are still available). However, I actually prefer the facing pages. Even when I don't know the original language (or even more so in a case, like French, where I do) just being able to see the original on the page -- the line lengths, the look of the words -- can give me a sense of how the poem "feels" in its original form.

"Scheherazade" by John Ashbery
From Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Penguin Books 1976
[Wednesday, August 6th]

I'm starting to sound like the cranky old critic, because I don't like John Ashbury either. But in Ashbury's case, for completely different reasons. Ashbury is almost preternaturally talented. His sense of language, music, and motion in poetry is pure artistry. Every line he writes sounds beautiful. "Sounds". That's the problem. For example:

"an inexhaustible wardrobe has been placed at the disposal of each new occurence"

With the exception of an occasional poem (like the title poem of his book Some Trees) and one entire book (Double Dream of Spring) which are some of the best poems written in the English language, his work is practically drivel. His poems flirt with meaning, but always skitter away as if afraid to make a point.

What is so annoying is that he is so talented. It's almost as if he's lazy; it is so easy for him to write a beautiful sounding poem that he doesn't bother to trifle with making sense.

So every few years I optimistically buy one of his books, leaf through it, get disappointed, and put it on the shelf where it remains only half read. Self-Portrait is an exception. I've read it completely at least three times, but haven't liked it yet.

Am I being fair? Probably not. Am I being unduly harsh? Possibly. The fact he is so talented and wastes it is what gets my goat.

Mind you, I am not saying poems have to make sense. John Love's book Touch Code, which is brilliant, also flirts with meaning, teasing the reader, but that is its goal. Ashbury's own book The Vermont Notebook, which begins with pages of seemingly random lists, is another example. There is meaning in its pure existence, but little else. But it is a joy to read because you are not expecting anything and are happy to encounter serendipitous moments of connection here and there.

What irks me about Ashbury's other books (Double Dream of Spring excepted, as I said) is that they announce the presence of meaning -- through their titles and their choice of vocabulary -- but then cheat you. It's like poetic bait and switch.

"Snow" by Russell Banks
Snow, Granite Publications 1974
[Thursday, August 7th]

Russell Banks is better known as a novelist. In fact, perhaps exclusively known as a novelist. (Snow is the only book of poetry listed in his Wikipedia entry.)

Banks' poetry is earnest. He is trying. Unfortunately, he falls into that pattern of writers who believe that by breaking prose down into lines and emphasizing the words, it will carry more meaning. It won't.

I don't want to say he is a beginning writer (of poetry) because he isn't. But he isn't writing for the music; he is writing for the intensity. But that intensity doesn't get translated to the reader. The halting line breaks, the unnecessary lack of articles in lines like "my / face pressed by / glass surface -- / kissings -- my / hand snapped on /lights outside / and I saw..." All serve to distance reader and writer.

This is something I sensed years ago when I was starting out (even in my own work at times), but probably couldn't have articulated back then.

"Royal Progress" by Antonin Bartusek
From The Aztec Calendar & Other Poems translated by Ewald Osers, Iowa Translation Series, 1975
[Friday, August 8th]

One doesn't want to promote stereotypes, but in the arts common behavior is more a result of nuture than nature. We learn from our compatriots, which is why there are "schools" of poetry, painting, etc where no physical institution exists.

That said, contemporary Eastern European poets tend to have an authority in their statements that is not found in American or English writers. Even W. S. Merwin who is perhaps the closest stylistically to the East Europeans (after the actual emigres, like Simic), will tend to excuse, explain, or elaborate on his statements.

But the Europeans leave them bare, to stand on their own merit. And, as a result, have a sense of authority and authenticity which is enviable. That is how Bartusek can get away with lines like "At dawn we trip over our own shadow, / unknown posthumous sons / of nameless kings." Impressive. (Nice translations as well.)

"Le Possede" by Charles Baudelaire
From Baudeliare, translated by Francis Scarfe, Penguin Books, 1964
[Saturday, August 9th]

Two years ago I sold off about half of my poetry books -- things I was bored with or have carried around for years, never read, and figured I never would read. It seems I got rid of most of my copies of Baudelaire and all of my Rimbaud. This is the only one I have left.

However, I suspect I kept this volume because it emphasizes the original French, delegating the translations to prose at the bottom of the page, like footnotes. Mind you, the translations are absolutely awful. But I probably kept it so I could concentrate on the French, if I ever read it.

The problem is that the world weary, seen-it-all attitude of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, & co. is very appealing when you're young (teens and twenties). I felt its draw, but I was also suspect. It is such an easy persona to put on. It seemed false, and unnecessary, when I saw my friends take to it.

I am not claiming Baudelaire was a poseur. I don't know. I am less star-struck now and see the poems as far more limited and strangely self-satisfied than I did when I encountered them in college.

"Christmas at the Buddhists'" by Robin Behn
From The Red Hour, Harper Perennial, 1993
[Sunday, August 10th]

I want to like Robin Behn's books. They are instantly appealing -- warm and friendly in their colloquial good nature. However, as much as I like her writing, at the same time I am put off. In each poem there is usually a moment, an image, or an expression that assumes too much familiarity. Sort of like a distant relative who insists on giving you a big lipsticky kiss every time you meet, her poems are scattered with images or references that assume you get it and can fill in the emotional details. For example: "I remember your postman-shoes" (from "Our Mutual Friend in Heaven"). I'm sorry, I don't remember. And the following explanation doesn't help erase the linguistic discontinuity.

Having said that, "Christmas at the Buddhists'" is the exception to the rule. There are no disruptions. The poem flows smoothly, adding layer and layer of personal reflection, building its story and its strength to the point where she can pull off the impossible ending, the statement "I qualify, like them, for admittance" without a hint of artifice or false emotion. That is what poetry is about.

"After 99 Comes 100" by Bill Berkson
From Lush Life, Z Press, 1984
[Monday, August 11th]

Bill Berkson is perhaps best known as friend of Frank O'Hara and subject of the poem "Biotherm", which is a shame. Berkson is an able writer in his own right. His writing has a slightly luminous feel to it. As a consequence, there is a lot to like in this book. But never quite a whole poem.

The problem is Berkson's writing is at its best when he isn't trying to write a poem; when he forgets and just writes naturally, as in the lines "this Election Day I tell you / I don't think there's much character in second sight". But his writing is at his worst when he is trying to be a poet, like "my loose foot stumbles overexposed / on the breeze-blasted mesa". The book ends up as a muddle of both.

"Gradation" by Charles Bernstein
From Islets/Irritations, Jordan Davies, 1983
[Tuesday, August 12th]

The Language poets fascinate me. They fascinate me because I am curious about what it is they do, why they do it, and how I react to it. At first, their work looks like the surrealists' -- a series of juxtapositions and contradictions to expectation. However, the language poets are playing havoc with the language, not the physical images; rearranging the adjectives and syntax rather than the nouns and verbs.

Where Bernstein says "good looks tear down / the harpsichorded shaft..." a surrealist would have said "the harpsichord's good looks tear down..." The language poets are doing sonically what the surrealists did psychologically.

The question is: is it interesting? Or rather, does it amount to anything? The answer is... it depends. Polemics do not make poetry, poetry does. And so as with other "schools" I like some and dislike others, for reasons largely tangential to their philosophical basis. As for Bernstein, I enjoy reading his poems because they sound good. But they are ultimately boring and I can't finish a whole book because there is no there there, to borrow Gertrude Stein's phrase.

"Sonnet XXXIV" by Ted Berrigan
FromThe Sonnets,United Artists Books, 1982
[Wednesday, August 13th]

Three random notes:

• You have to be open to read poems. Open in many different ways because each poet or poem will require different things of you. For instance, Berrigan's poems at first appear to be childish prattling, which turns many readers off. But if you are open to the joys of simple thoughts, to the abrupt turns and disjunctures of the human mind, the poems become less annoying and more playful. Unfortunately, in the end, Berrigan's work doesn't offer much else but that. And his constant private references and less than stellar thought patterns still end up being more annoying than pleasurable, no matter how open you are.
  
• Reading Berrigan, who in many ways patterned his writing after Frank O'Hara, just reminds me once again of what a genius O'Hara was.
• Whatever you might think of his poems, Berrigan's books are beautiful as physical objects. This edition of The Sonnets is a really nice, intimate size -- slightly smaller than most poetry books -- with a gorgeous wraparound drawing on the cover by Louis Hamlin. And the University of California Collected Poems is equally impressive, but in a completely different way.

"Dream Song 208" by John Berryman
From His Toy, His Dream, His Rest, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1968
[Thursday, August 14th]

I confess: I cheated. I saw Berryman coming up on the shelf and started flipping through his books a couple of days ahead. Berryman is one of those writers I depend on and go back to if I read too much bad poetry and begin to doubt my own sense of what poetry is about. He consistently amazes me and reminds me of how powerful poetry can be.

At the same time, every few years I need to reread parts of the Dream Songs. Because, if I haven't read it for awhile, I begin to suspect his unique voice and diction may be -- not a fad -- but appealing only as a counterpoint to the culture of a specific moment in time. It isn't. Amazingly enough, given his poems' strange, almost parodic, style they are not dependent on any specific time or school of writing. As his protagonist Henry says "groovy, pal."

"A Ballad of Going Down to the Store" by Miron Bialoszewski
From The Revolution of Things translated by Andrzej Busza and Bogdan Czaykowski, Charioteer Press, 1974
[Friday, August 15th]

I know almost nothing about Bialoszewski except what is on the dust jacket of this tiny book. I don't have any other books of his and I don't think he is in any anthology I own (although I could be wrong).

This volume covers a lot of ground -- shaped poems ala Apollinaire, monologues, dialogues, imagistic poems, rallying cries... Perhaps too much territory for such a short book (only 36 pages). The result is kind of like going to the circus or watching a Constructivist play -- there are plenty of surprises and enjoyment, but all the posing and loud noises tend to make you doubt the sincerity of it all. Mind you, the Charioteer Press books are always interesting and beautiful besides.

"September Night with an Old Horse" by Robert Bly
From Silence in the Snowy Fields, Wesleyan University Press, 1962
[Saturday, August 16th]

I chose to read a poem from one of Bly's earlier books, rather than something more recent like Morning Poems. I did this because, for all his "wildness" and talk of self and the inner beast, Bly has an exquisite sense of control over expression and ability to channel that unfathomed passion into words that communicate directly to the reader.

I hadn't read the early books for a while and what I expected to find was the same sense of raw talent but with far less control. But that's not the case. Looking backwards, you find almost the exact same sensibility, the same concerns, and the same tightly focused channeling. Unlike almost any other poet and despite his various and changeable interests, Bly has had a single style and a singular talent for expression his entire career.

What you do find in these early poems is a much more limited vocabulary and a less laser-like focus on the image. I used to complain that his early books had too much "darkness" in them. Not negativity or ominousness, but literally too much use of the words "dark" and "darkness".

"Darkness" is a vague term, and as a result his images in this early work do not carry the piercing specificity they came to later on. "In Arabia, the horses live in the tents, near dark gold, and water, and tombs." But it is the same Robert Bly and the same sensibility at work and the same controlled channeling of emotion to paper.

The one exception to this rule is The Teeth Mother Naked At Last. It is a very hard book to read and must have been a terribly hard book to write. I think this is the one occasion where Bly lost control of his expression and let the passion get the better of him.

However, none of this affects his importance both as an influence on modern poetry and as a model of what poetry can be -- a growing, evolving, but consistently fascinating thing.

"Olvido" by Vittorio Bodini
From The Hands of the South translated by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, Charioteer Press, 1980
[Sunday, August 17th]

The trials and tribulations of reading poetry in translation has been discussed many times before and is too large a topic to cover here. Suffice it to say translations are a double-edged sword. On the one hand they are a window providing a glimpse into other cultures, styles of writing, or ways of thinking that do not exist in the English-speaking world. On the other hand, at best, only about 50-70% of the original poem's power survives the translation process; the music, the intonations, small cultural references, are all clouded by the filter of another language. (At worst, it can seem like 10% or less survives, when the translation barely makes sense in English.)

I just don't get this poem. "All the clocks in your house / are restless flowers, / or pulse with temples of lemons / in fruit dishes..." Whether it is the translation or the original poem, I can't tell. There are other poems in this book I do like. I can make sense of certain images and events. But the process is way too hard for the experience to be pleasurable, never mind enlightening. There are times when you simply have to turn away from a poem, a book, or a poet and say "not this time." It may reveal itself at later. But for now it is not a window, it is a brick wall.

"Her Brown Checked Dress" by Marianne Boruch
From View from the Gazebo, Wesleyan University Press, 1985
[Monday, August 18th]

I know I should like these poems. Boruch is clearly a talented writer, with a precision of language and seriousness about her poems that makes you turn the pages like fragile leaves and speak in nothing above a whisper. Unfortunately, I don't.

The problem is there is too much seriousness here. Everything is so too damned packed with impending overtones that at some point you have to break the scholarly silence and say "so what?"

I'm not saying she's not a good writer. She is. But she is asking too much of the reader, washing us in some ominous about-to-happen that never resolves itself.

"this room flooded with childhood"

"my uncle's young and in a frame smiling like he never smiles"

"we discuss it carefully, the way chess is played on a deeply shadowed porch."

These are not impenetrable personal references, as you would find in bad poems. They are carefully selected but strangely impersonal images rigged to pull our emotional strings. They work at what they are intended for -- generating intense emotion in the reader -- but they don't work towards the resolution of the poem itself. They are like a trompe d'oeil painting. Brilliant work that makes us feel somehow cheated.

"Ode to Bela Lugosi" by John Bowie
From Screen Gems, W.D. Hoffstadt & Sons, 1978
[Tuesday, August 19th]

Here is an oddity. Bowie's book (published posthumously) is all poems about movies and movie stars. The poems show a great love for the movie industry and its personalities. They also show a spirited sense of verbal play and recognition of the awkward divide between the public and the private self. You can see why his friends liked him and his work (as evidenced by the tributes included in the book.) But I'm afraid there's not much else there. There is no real intimacy or enlightenment. So, it is fun to read, but you won't learn much.

"Propelled by Portals Whose Only Shame" by Richard Brautigan
From Rommel Drives on Deep into Egypt, Dell Publishing, 1970
[Wednesday, August 20th]

What are these books doing on my shelves? Just kidding. The two volumes of Brautigan's poems were originally my wife's. I've tried reading them off and on since I first encountered his poetry in the 70's, without much luck.

On the positive side, they don't show as much wear as you might expect. They are a product of their time and are steeped in the contemporary lingo and ethos. But surprisingly they don't sound as silly as other cultural artifacts of the age (such as episodes of The Mod Squad).

However, as rebellious and didactically confrontational as they intend to be, the poems don't have much depth. So the brashness of 30-40 years ago sounds quite pale to modern ears.

"About the Way to Construct Enduring Works" by Bertolt Brecht
From Poems 1913-1956 edited by John Willett & Ralph Manheim, Methuen, 1976
[Thursday, August 21st]

Brecht is a fascinating juxtaposition to Brautigan. Brecht is also very "of the moment". He writes in the vernacular of the time. But the two couldn't be farther apart.

Despite Brecht's obsession with the here and now ("How long do works endure? As long as they are not completed.") his poems have a universality that transcends the specifics of time. Similarly, the flat, intentionally prosaic style of his writing instills its own sense of formality. Finally, the unabashedly didactic statements, which from any other writer would be decried as "telling, not showing" become their own form of imagism -- lyric poetry borne of the inner symbolism of morality.

"Rather Life" by Andre Breton
From Selected Poems translated byKenneth White, Cape Editions, 1972
[Friday, August 22nd]

Like everyone else it seems, I was attracted to Surrealism in my teens and early twenties. It is like an rite of passage: stuffed animals at 6, dinosaurs at 10, pirates at 14, surrealism at 18... With most people, this fad quickly wears off, becoming yet another dim memory of a somewhat embarrassing stage in their development.

I stuck to surrealism a little longer. Perhaps because of my pre-existing interest in poetry; perhaps, -- since French was the only foreign language I could read -- because I could actually read the original texts, making it more exotic. Whatever the reason, I stuck with it and learned to distinguish its many practitioners.

Learned to distinguish and be selective. Breton made a name for himself for his polemics, the manifestos, but in reality he was a lousy poet. Despite Surrealism's obsession with the subconscious and automatic writing, Breton's poems are stiff and awkward. Almost like bad parodies of his compatriots' works. The only time I can bear reading his poems is when he is collaborating with one of his more talented friends (Soupault, Eluard, Char, etc.)

So this book, one of several handsome volumes of his work on my shelf, stands more as a historical document than as a real piece of poetry.

"83 Grade School Children" by Michael Burkard
From Fictions from the Self, W.W. Norton & Co., 1988
[Saturday, August 23rd]

Michael Burkard's poems fascinate me. His first book, In a White Light, astonished me, although I could barely make heads or tails of it at the time. The sound of the poems washed over me like some sort of magic elixir.

The remarkable part is that that sense of wonder at the sound of his poems has continued through all of his books, despite the fact that the writing itself is almost the reverse of what it started as. With each volume his writing becomes more and more transparent, objectively descriptive, almost clinical in its level of detail and lack of commentary: "There are very few unqualified smiles / in the photograph, a few are looking off / as if a dog is barking..."

Even his use of line breaks in arbitrary places seems to challenge the reader to call them poems at all. But they are. They are amazingly beautiful lyrics disguised as mundane descriptions of the every day.

"Hoodlum at Night" by Dino Campana
From Orphic Songs translated by I.L. Salomon, October House, 1968
[Sunday, August 24th]

I haven't cracked this book yet. By that I mean, decoded.

I've tried reading it a number of times, thinking I was reading the wrong poems or not in the right frame of mind... But despite the fact that I "understand" it on a what-does-it-mean level, I don't see why it matters or what I'm supposed to get from it.

It could be some combination of a stilted translation, an unfamiliar culture, and incompatible personalities. Whatever the cause, this book remains opaque.

"Ode to Severn Darden" by Paul Carroll
From Odes, Big Table Books, 1969
[Monday, August 25th]

Well, I didn't pick at random this time. I couldn't resist the opportunity to reread Carroll's six foot "Ode to Severn Darden About Angels, the Common Cold, Nuclear Disarmament, and Popcorn" which is printed on a very long fold-out in the middle of the book.

I wasn't particularly fond of this book when I first got it. But I kept it and I'm glad I did. The problem was that at the time I was into "great poets" and Carroll is not a great poet. He's OK. In fact, he can be quite enjoyable. But you have to be open to it and not quite so critically minded to appreciate his poems.

The fact is, whether Carroll was a great poet or not, he was a great influence on poetry, having published the first books of Bill Knott, Dennis Schmitz, and Andrei Codrescu, among others. That is a pretty impressive resume. Add to that his obvious love of poetry and you realize he was clearly one of the angels of poetry himself.

Besides, any poem with lines like "or like the static cracking from the squawk box in a checker taxi which is how the Dearly Beloved Deceased attempt to communicate with us" deserves our respect.

(I strongly recommend the touching tribute to Carroll written by Paul Hoover and published in the Chicago Review.)

"The Years from You to Me" by Paul Celan
From Nineteen Poems translated by Michael Hamburger, Carcanet Press, 1972
[Tuesday, August 26th]

These poems are full of pain. So much pain, in fact, that it cannot escape or be effectively communicated to the reader. Instead you view it through an invisible barrier, like watching someone suffering a horrible death through a one-way mirror. The poems are so caught up in their own pain, they are impenetrable.

You can sympathize with them, from a distance. If you've felt a lot of pain yourself, you might even empathize with them. But you can't be them.

Perhaps that is partly what makes poetry poetry: the ability to be the poem, or the poem to be you, for just a moment.

Entry "78" by Rene Char
From Leaves of Hypnos translated by Cid Corman, Mushinsha/Grossman, 1973
[Wednesday, August 27th]

Rene Char is a surrealist like Paul Cezanne was an impressionist. In both cases, their talent and dedication to their craft would have resulted in much the same output, regardless of the other artists of their time or persuasion. Andre Breton pronounced, Rene Char created.

"Time rotates but there is only one season" by Tom Clark
A postcard published by the Alternative Press, date unknown
[Thursday, August 28th]

I've already written about the pros and cons of Tom Clark's poetry. This postcard is an example of Clark at his best. A poem about baseball and a poem about eternity. All in six lines. Nothing wasted; no throw-away lines. Genius on a 4x6 card.

"Demands of Exile" by Andrei Codrescu
From Belligerence, Coffee House Press, 1991
[Friday, August 29th]

The cover blurb declares Codrescu "prodigiously talented". Probably true. He is clearly talented. What I don't get is why I have so much trouble reading his books. One time I'll like them, another time I hate them, yet another time I'm bored. (This time I'm bored.)

Codrescu has what is often called the "gift of gab". He can write perfectly in any number of vernaculars (a talent he shares with James Tate) mixed with a surrealist's love of surprise and the unexpected. The result is a loud, somewhat confrontation style of poetry. At times I find this linguistic fencing invigorating. At other times, I get to wondering: what's the point?

The problem is I'm not sure that is a valid question. I don't ask that of Frank O'Hara or Jack Anderson. Why is it apropriate to demand it of Codrescu (or Ashbery, or ....)?

I think it comes down to what you are asking of the reader. If you are going to throw things at me and demand I consider whether they have meaning (e.g. "We are growing a bitter seed issue / of poets who can't go home again") then I will expect them not to devolve into cheap vaudevillism (e.g. "the pen prevents / the closing of the fist and prices being / what they are it's a good thing too"). I'm not arguing against Codrescu's prodigious talent, I am saying I'm disappointed when it lets him down.

"Plot" by Billy Collins
From Pokerface, Kenmore Press, 1977
[Saturday, August 30th]

I went back to Collins's first book, because it was the one I enjoyed the most and I wanted to find out why (or if it was a momentary thing). No, I still like it. There is an edge to Collins's writing that keeps the reader on their toes. And Pokerface epitomizes this style: quick, funny, yet piercing poems. The reason they work is because they hit and run; nothing lasts too long or tries to draw out the metaphor too far.

Which also explains my reticence concerning his later books. Make no mistake about it, Collins is a clever, suave writer and his poems -- which are longer and more drawn out in his later books -- go down smoothly. However, the poems themselves don't hold much more meaning than the original poems in Pokerface. Can I criticize them for appearing to have more meaning? For wanting to achieve more and only reaching the same level? Perhaps not. But I can't praise them for it either.

"The Scenario" by Cid Corman
From And the Word, Coffee House Press, 1987
[Sunday, August 31st]

Cid Corman's poems are earnest. I chose a poem from the earlier part of this book. The latter half of the book demonstrates the influence of reading and translating Japanese poetry on Corman, as his line becomes shorter and the poems more cryptic and, well, mystical. But not really mystical. More reliant on a mystical connectivity between random images which may or may not exist. For example:

Rain fell
a moment
ago

stopped for
a moment
now.

Unfortunately, many of these poems end up resembling parodies of the western idea of what a Haiku is. So is this bad poetry? Well, as I said, Corman is earnest and that shows through in his work. And sometimes I think earnestness is 50% of what makes up a poem. (The rest being -- what? -- 10% craft, 20% beauty, and 20% the ability to move the reader. That's just a rough estimate...)

This brings two questions to mind. First, is it fair to assess the "earnestness" -- the intent -- of the author as part of evaluating their work? As an objective value, no. But as a subjective effect the poems have on the reader -- how earnest the work appears to the audience -- yes.

The second question is why don't I afford the same sense of earnestness to reading, say, Billy Collins? This is one of the deficits of craft: if you have the talent to write as flawlessly as Collins, there are more expectations on what you are capable of writing -- and more suspicion about the veracity of emotion. Is this a true feeling or a poetic sleight of hand? Is it truly beautiful or simply pretty words?

One last influence on the reader's perception of "truth" in poetry is the context of the poet's larger body of work. I have been reading individual poems, but I notice that I have, more often than not, been commenting on the poet's total work.

There are certain poems that stand -- or stand out -- by themselves. Robert Frost's 'Mending Wall" is an example. But other poems are not so self-reliant and gain strength from their existence within the context of a poet's overall work, the readers' understanding of the poet's (or the persona's) sensibility, their aesthetic, their point of view.

Robert Bly's poems are strong, but they are even stronger as you see they form a continuous thread from the 1950's to the present. Similarly, Cid Corman's later haiku-like poems seem almost silly, taken one at a time. But taken in the context of what he was attempting in the earlier poems, you can admire the effort (if not the result).

This is the same issue that comes into play when reading magazines. Reading poems -- lots of poems, 20, 50, 100 -- by different poets read "out of context" can be a very disorienting experience. Seen in a magazine, a single poem may elicit no response -- or a negative response -- which when you come back to it later after reading more of the poet's work you think "why didn't I see this before?" Constantly having to reset your aesthetic radar between poems can be very difficult and tiring.

(Continue to a Postscript to A Month of Poems)

Preface to a Month of Poems

This is a shaggy dog tale if there ever was one and I'm not sure how interesting it will be to others, but I find it a curious example of how the mind works. At least, my mind.

I am about to start a new post where I will read and comment on a poem every day for at least a month. The process will be:

• Each day I will read a poem by a different poet
• I will will then write a short comment about the poem, the poet, or some random thought the reading of it instigates.
  
• At the end of the month I will either stop, or if I still find it interesting, I'll keep going.

Since this is an experiment and I don't want to bloat this site with lots of short -- possibly boring -- entries, the entire month of poems will be a single post that I will edit each day.

Why do this? Well, that's what I find curious. It all started when I was cleaning my office and looking at my shelf (actually, shelves) of Nintendo DS games, several of which are still in the wrapper. I want to play them, I just don't have a lot of time. That's when it occurred to me to help encourage me to play them by creating an exercise: a month of video games.

The original idea was to play a different video game a day for an entire month. That would get me through most of my DS collection, including both games I've played before and those I haven't. I could then use the excuse of commenting on them here in my blog to complete the exercise.

Unfortunately, there was an immediate problem with this plan. Video games, even the simplest ones, take time to get used to. Quite frankly, even if I played for an hour a day, there are a number of games where I would not get sufficiently involved in or comfortable with their controls to do any more than frustrate myself.

So that wasn't going to work. Next step was to think of similar things that I don't spend enough time with. The obvious answer was my collection of poetry books. I had recently rearranged the bookshelves and --for lack of any better scheme and as a change from my previous by school or genre organization -- I sorted the books alphabetically by author.

So the next plan was to read a book a day for a month, reading from one end of the shelf to the other. Since I have far too many books to read them all (that would be more like a year of poetry), I decided to limit it to a different poet each day.

But I still have the problem of time. Poetry books, like video games, take a while to get involved with. To be fair to a book of poems you need to familiarize yourself with the poet's voice (or voices), their style, what you could refer to as the ontology of their poetic world... But unlike video games, poetry books are made up of individual poems that are -- in most cases -- intended to stand on their own. They do not require learning a control scheme, a background story, or any other prerequisites.

Which led me to my final refinement: reading a single poem by a different poet each day for a month. I have no idea if this will result in any useful revelations for either myself or the readers of my blog. That is why it is an experiment. But succeed or fail, it should be interesting to find out what happens.

(Go to A Month of Poems)

The KM Core Sample

One of my favorite diagrams of the past year or so is what I call the "KM Core Sample". The Core Sample is not really an architectural diagram, since it shows no process or function that can be implemented. But I have found the diagram to be extremely useful in explaining why knowledge management is such a complex topic and where various KM methodologies "fit" within the strata of the knowledge universe.

(Click to expand)

The Core Sample is -- like its name sake -- a snapshot of a point in time. It captures the various levels of "knowledge" and where they reside. The diagram also illustrates the rationalization and codification of knowledge as it rises through the layers.

That last statement might sound like the description of a process: the codification of knowledge. But what I like about the diagram is that it shows that different types of knowledge reside in all levels at any given time.

This is because the process of codifying or standardizing knowledge into actionable procedures and practices actually changes the knowledge. It cleanses, sanitizes, and simplifies the knowledge -- removing the stray tidbits, the ugly but necessary workarounds, the secret tricks of the trade... all of the untidy clutter that make up true expertise in a field -- all of this is stripped off to achieve a linear, documentable, process.

But back to the diagram. Let's take a quick look at the various strata of the core sample:

• Starting at the bottom, at the very core, are people. This is where true knowledge exists. In other words what people know. And the most accurate way of sharing that knowledge is talking to the people who possess it: asking questions, telling stories, cracking jokes.
  
• The next layer up is where that personal communication is expanded to allow people to "talk" to others they do not know or cannot meet in person. Email distribution lists, forums, and other discussion technology reside in this layer. (Note that blogs are also in this layer.)
• The next layer up represents "knowledge capture". Here the knowledge is instantiated in documents of some kind: sample documents, lesson learned, case studies, white papers. These all represent mechanisms used to selectively capture and sort knowledge in such a way that it can be reused by people who may never come in contact with the original author. The obvious limitation is that only a small portion of what any individual knows about their profession is captured in any of these documents. This is offset by trying to capture the most important or influential pieces of wisdom.
• Finally, in the top layer the captured knowledge and learnings are further refined into a defined set of templates, guidelines, and standard processes. In some sense, you might say that in this final layer the actual "knowledge" has been removed and is replaced by step-by-step procedures to ensure a consistent and reliable execution of desired behavior. To achieve this goal, a significant amount of sorting, sifting, and selection is required to winnow down all possible options or alternatives to a limited set of recommended or required processes and deliverables.
  

What I like about the core sample diagram is that it helps you discuss the scope and effects of different approaches to knowledge management. Collaboration strategies focus on the tacit knowledge layer. Methods like knowledge harvesting, lessons learned, and storytelling focus on the best practices layer. While ITIL, Six Sigma, ISO 9001, and other standardization methodologies focus on establishing institutionalized knowledge.

Implementing Web 2.0 Inside the Castle Walls

All the buzz about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 is exciting and good for theoretical discussions and all, but how do you actually go about doing something about it?

In response to one of my previous posts zyxo commented that Enterprise 2.0 is not just Web 2.0 inside the firewall. True. It is certainly not just implementing technology, for sure. But it is also more than just thinking differently. It is acting differently and managing knowledge differently. And that change is impossible using the traditional business applications that are built on old assumptions about security, ownership, and usage. So at some point you must tactically bring social software into the mix.

As I mentioned before, process is extremely important when you bring social software in-house. It is the process that needs to change or adapt for web 2.0 to have any impact on the business. (It won't do any good if you switch from SharePoint to wikis if no one knows its there or cannot access it due to security restrictions.)

On a more tactical level, you need to understand what usage you expect and what you don't, so you can manage the technology and its content. You need to identify success criteria so you can tell whether you are succeeding in solving a problem or not. At the same time, you don't want to apply so much control you squelch the inherent viral nature of the technology which requires users trying and learning for themselves.

More importantly, you are operating in a microcosm -- the scope of your company employees -- rather than the entire web universe. This significantly reduces the elemental power of many web 2.0 technologies and in some cases may make them totally ineffectual.

There are five ways of making the shift to web 2.0 technologies inside the firewall. (Actually, I have only seen three or four "in the wild", but there are additional options you might want to consider.) Needless to say, the most common option is not necessarily the most effective:

• Build it and they will come -- this is the process-less option. Set up a web 2.0 technology inside the firewall and let people use it as they will. This is quite common with blogs, bookmarking, and wikis. The problem is, as mentioned before, there is no way of telling if these technologies are succeeding at solving a business problem. A more inherent problem with this approach is that if your users are already using the same technology outside the firewall to manage their links, their friends, or whatever, why would they use an internal version and then have to maintain both? And if they aren't using the technology outside, what would drive them to use it inside? There is no impetus to use the service for new users and a deficit for existing users. The service tends to sit idle or be used by only a few enthusiasts.
  
• Replicate what succeeds on the web -- otherwise known as "Wikipedia inside the firewall". If it worked outside, it should inside as well, right? Well, not quite. Many times the first thing a company does with a wiki inside the firewall is try to create an internal wikipedia. Why? What information do they expect to collect here, that isn't readily available outside the firewall already? And do you have the enthusiasm for maintaining business-related content that the maintainers of Wikipedia have? Ditto blogs. Follow the external model where anyone can have a blog. Many get started, few stay alive. Why? Because, quite frankly, there are usually several other, well established, channels for sharing information within a corporation and the blogs create an alternative, competing signal.
  
• Define a process and pilot -- This is the traditional business approach: define what the technology should be used for, who should use it, and run a pilot to test it. The only problem here is that most web 2.0 technologies are dependent on a critical mass of users to be effective. Five people editing a wiki or three people blogging is not necessarily going to tell you much about the potential of these technologies. Also, because these technologies often offer new usage models (rather than computerizing existing processes) it is easy to miscalculate what processes will actually benefit from their application.
  
• Establish a service and solicit trial cases -- This is a combination of #1 and #3. I have never seen this done, but it seems like a reasonable approach. Have IT establish an internal service, then ask the business groups to propose pilots (i.e. processes to apply the service to). This will have a better chance of exposing innovative applications of the technologies to business cases and would require the declaration of the business process that it is being applied to.
• Extend existing services/processes using web 2.0 technology -- I have not personally seen this in use elsewhere (except where we are doing it ourselves) but most of the current success stories of web 2.0 inside the firewall -- such as IBM's Fringe -- involve extending or integrating existing services or applications with web 2.0 technology. Fringe adds tagging and rating of people that is integrated into an existing white pages application, as I understand it. This is possibly the most likely approach to succeed because the existing application provides an inherent process, an established audience and user base, and linkage to familiarize users with the new capabilities.

Linking web 2.0 technologies to existing systems has another benefit -- it justifies their existence. For example, social tagging inside the firewall vs. social tagging outside has little to recommend it, and a number of drawbacks. A smaller audience, less flexibility to grow and extend features, simply less exposure and name recognition than public services... On the other hand, tie that tagging to how the corporate intranet search works (automated favorites, improved relevance, best bets, etc.), and users will start to see the direct impact of their use of the internal service as well as having the service in front of them on a regular basis when they search.

Understanding Technology Adoption From the Customer's Perspective

Much has been written about the adoption of technology from an industry perspective. Clay Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma, Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm, and Malcolm Gadwell in Tipping Point all articulate models for the adoption (or lack thereof) of technologies based on their position in the product lifecycle.

However, as interesting as these models are, they provide little solace to the individual customer who is trying to decide whether to purchase and rollout a specific technology for his or her own business. All of the preceding authors discuss technology at a macro level: its adoption by the market in terms of volume of customers. But for each customer, there is a second, more important adoption that occurs after the purchase: the rollout and, hopefully, successful integration of the technology into their specific business processes.

The problem is that no matter how "successful" a product is in the market, there is no guarantee it will actually prove to be effective when applied to a specific business situation. SAP may be the poster child for this syndrome, where several large-scale implementations are rumored to have proven unusable in the end and ultimately had to be abandoned.

So, what does determine if a technology can successfully be incorporated into an existing business environment? The answer is not related to the technology's current marketing position or "disruptiveness" -- although that will impact the outcome. The real attributes that influence the success or failure of technology rollout in an individual business are all related to the business itself: its culture, its environment, and its history.

Traditional Technology Rollout Plans

Any corporate technology plan worth its salt includes an adoption chart showing the expected rollout over time. These charts fall into two categories: the "s" curve and the stairstep.



The "s" curve shows a slow but steady adoption shifting to a steep climb flattening out at a plateau, usually marked by 100% of the target audience. This model follows the "chasm" or "tipping point" theory where at some time enough early adopters are using the technology that word of mouth takes effect and rollout becomes self-realizing. Adoption ramps up until success is achieved. (Here is an example.)

The stairstep is a more phased approach and assumes adoption based on the ability to train users. The steps in the chart are usually based on incrementally adding divisions or projects as the technology is rolled out progressively through the corporation.

Neither chart takes into consideration that employees may choose not to use the new technology or may actively resist using it. And as much as we would like to think it doesn't happen, these are the real reasons technologies fail. There may be technical problems. There may be bugs and system failures. But ultimately what determines any technology's success or failure is whether the target employees agree to use it or not.

Understanding the Technology Adoption Curves

Where traditionally adoption is seen as a single curve, there are actually three equally important variables that need to be considered:

• Adoption rate
• Rejection rate
• Misuse and abuse

Therefore, the real adoption might look something like the following diagram



Adoption is the number of employees actively using the technology. Resistance is the opposite of adoption; it is the number of employees who refuse to use the technology or actively complain about it to their friends and colleagues. Misuse is the number of users who are using the technology, but in ways it was not intended (and usually for activities that should not be encouraged).

Real adoption rates are more erratic and event driven than the theoretical s-curve or stairstep. There is usually a series of "bumps" with each announcement or management memo concerning the new product. However, usage then drops off after the bump. Why? Because unless the users see a direct impact on their own jobs, there is no incentive for them to keep using the new technology (beyond management dictate). So with each memo more people will try it; some will stick with it, but others will stop.

Resistance is difficult to measure, but has a real and significant impact on adoption. If users find the technology objectionable, too hard to use, or simply burdensome, they will avoid it, work around it, or use it grudgingly (and often badly). Resistance will tend to exaggerate the spikes and can often lead to a drop off of usage over time.

Misuse is the hardest to account for, but is again a serious problem. The classic example of misuse is email: many users in large corporations use email as an archiving tool -- emailing themselves documents as a way of saving them (rather than leaving them on their PC and risk their loss). The result is quick saturation of the mail storage system with little or no way to sort out the "misused" mails from real business correspondence.

Understanding and Accounting for Resistance

It would seem that resistance to a technology is solely a reaction to the usability or applicability of the technology to the function it performs, but that is not the case. People can reject technical solutions for a number of reasons. Yes, if it is difficult to use or hard to understand, resistance will be higher. But it also depends on whether there is already a solution in place.

Replacing an existing tool can be more difficult than instituting a new tool. Even if the existing processes are outdated or overly complex, employees can be resistant to replacing the known for something new. And it doesn't have to be one technology for another. There can be resistance to implementing a technical solution to even a manual process, if they see the manual process as "working". In other words, unless the employees themselves see a problem, they are not likely to appreciate or accept the solution.

This is particularly problematic when replacing multiple point solutions with a single corporate-wide technology. Each of the existing tools will have advocates who will adamantly argue the merits of their own solution over the proposed replacement. And. quite frankly, in many cases their arguments are not entirely baseless. Each division may have instituted a point solution tuned towards their needs and a corporate-wide solution is likely to result in some loss of functionality. Even if the overall outcome is better for the company, these separate divisions will see it as a step backwards for their own purposes.

So resistance is actually the result of a number of factors:

• Corporate culture: how accepting the organization is of change and technology in particular
• Current environment: whether there is an existing solution (or solutions) in place that is being replaced
• History: whether past rollouts have gone well or badly will heavily influence the receptiveness to further change

Clearly, when the technology you are implementing provides a unique and obvious advantage to the business and to those who must use the technology, then resistance will be low. But that combination of variables is rare. In most cases it is useful to take resistance into consideration when planning your rollout to lessen its impact.

Usually resistance can be overcome with sufficient management support. The implicit threat of losing one's job for not following through on a management dictate can help drive adoption. But at the same time, it will foster additional resistance as well. So if you take this approach, you better be sure you have the necessary management support -- and not just verbal support -- to address any complaints that arise about overly aggressive deadlines, time lost to training, missing or faulty features, etc.

Getting sufficient management attention for an extended period of time is not always possible, so the other option is to try to avoid resistance by not asserting too much pressure for adoption. In other words, using the carrot instead of the stick. Obviously, the tradeoff with this technique (i.e. not demanding strict adoption or applying management pressure) is that adoption will be significantly slower. On the plus side, done well, the adoption will be slow but steady, as there will be less resistance. But if there are strong advocates for alternate solutions, even this approach is likely to fail.

With either approach, there is likely to be at least some resistance, and the best policy is to preemptively counteract it. How? Preferably before, or as early as possible during, rollout identify the most likely sources of resistance. That is, alternative solutions, processes that will be affected by the change, and so on. Then identify the primary advocates for the alternatives or the most reputable critics of the change. Finally, approach these people personally. Explain the plans for rollout, the rationale, and ask them what are the most significant issues they foresee in adoption.

The goal is to persuade these key individuals that the plans are taking their concerns into consideration. To succeed, you may need to actually change the rollout plans or modify the technology somewhat (which is why doing this before rollout begins is preferable) because the goal is to convince them that their concerns are being taken seriously. And the only way to do that is to take them seriously.

Note, I did not say find the loudest or the harshest critics. The key is to find the most respected, dedicated, and sincere advocates. Loud critics can make your life a pain, but they can be overcome -- or at least counteracted -- by reasonable, respected people. You want to find the gurus, the experts people turn to for help. These are the people you want to convince.

Note that I also did not say convince them that the planned rollout is the best option. Be realistic. You will not be able to convince everyone that your plans are the right solution. The goal is to get them to recognize that it is at least well thought out and that their alternatives have been considered, even if rejected. This way, they may not turn around and advocate for you; but at least they will not argue against it and are likely to stand as a voice of reason during any confusion that arises during rollout.

Understanding and Accounting for Misuse

Misuse is different than resistance. Whereas resistance results in a downturn in adoption, misuse will give the impression that adoption is progressing well, because it involves active use. The problem is that the use runs counter to the original intent and may well interfere with the ultimate business goal.

Misuse can be very hard to identify and sometimes even harder to stop once begun. Like resistance, the key is to try and predict where it will occur and then (if it is serious enough) design around it, rather than trying to clean up after it becomes epidemic. But unlike resistance, where you can often guess where opposition will come from, it is difficult to predict in advance all the possible misuses of a system.

Take SharePoint, for example. SharePoint is a very useful tool in some ways -- it mixes the best of automated web site design, document management, and Windows-based security. But it doesn't do any of them in any great depth. It provides the easy creation of sites and subsites, libraries and lists.

But if you allow users to readily create these repositories (which can be a very efficient way to manage artifacts -- especially for smaller projects or teams -- without requiring a "librarian") you are also making those individuals responsible for the appropriate use and maintenance of those sites. Unfortunately, as eager as people are to create repositories, it is very hard to get them to do proper maintenance and delete them or clean them up periodically.

So two possible misuses of SharePoint are creating too many sites and not removing "dead" sites when their usefulness is over. (This is above and beyond the usual misuse issues such as storing and sharing inappropriate materials: copyrighted music, videos, etc.)

The use of disk quotas gives the appearance of alleviating these problems, since it stops runaway inflation of individual sites. But it doesn't actually stop the misuse. People can just create more sites if they can't increase the volume of the ones they already have. Also, disk quotas do not address the problem of undeleted "dead" sites. Restricting the number of sites any one user can create is another deterrent to creating too many sites, but involves an arbitrary limit (how many sites is "too many"?) and can result in animosity from your user population.

One alternative, if you suspect this lack of cleanup will be prevalent, would be to institute a policy of deleting sites that become inactive for a set period of time. Note that to make this practical, you will need to enhance the application itself to identify and automate this procedure.

Users will still complain that the content in inactive sites (for example, sites with no one accessing them for more than 60 days) is still needed. But unless SharePoint is also your archiving tool (a really bad idea, by the way), storing old content offline can be easily addressed with alternative, less expensive solutions.

The key is to predict what forms of misuse are most likely to occur based on the nature of the business, proclivities of the users, and any gaps or open capabilities in the technologies and processes being rolled out. This may require some imaginative thinking. More importantly, once the danger areas are identified, there may need to be changes or additions to the technologies themselves to ensure the desired processes are followed and negative alternative uses are avoided.

Note that you don't want to eliminate all alternatives, since users are likely to discover creative and effective business uses for the technology that were never planned. But this is another reason why it is a good idea to monitor the rollout periodically (every 6 months or so) to see what sort of uses are developing. This allows you to catch both misuses you hadn't thought of but need to account for as well as creative new uses that you may want to acknowledge and promote throughout the user community.

What I'm Reading: Mark Strand

A surprising thing happened to me when I went to the bookstore last week. I found two books of poems that I liked.

Now, this wouldn't seem to be such as surprise -- I like modern poetry. However, in most visits to the bookstore they either stock books I've already read or books I already decided not to read. For example, I love Robert Bly's work, but I have more of his books than the bookstore does. Same goes for Charles Simic. On the other hand, I find the work of May Sarton and Mary Oliver boring and pretentious. (Ditto Stanley Kunitz, Donald Hall, etc.) And as shocking and titillating as Charles Bukowski can be, his poems are pretty shallow. After 2 or 3, the persona starts to grate on me. So I have no need to read or own any of his 20+ volumes that every store seems to make available.

But last week was an exception. I found two books of interest. One is not so surprising: James Tate's The Ghost Soldiers. I've been a fan of Tate's work for a long time, starting with his first book The Lost Pilot. However, I went through a period (or more correctly, he went through a period) that put me off his writing. Starting around Riven Doggeries he published a number of volumes that seemed more interested in poking fun at language (and by extension, the people who use such idioms) than illuminating the small actions and inconsistencies that make up our lives.

Not that every poem has to be instructive or informative. (Frank O'Hara has brilliantly proven that.) But at some point poetry -- serious or not -- has to have some touch points with the readers' lives if it is going to have any lasting impact. And Tate's work of the late 70's and 80's seemed to lose that connection.

But Tate's recent books seem to have brought him back from whatever jag he was on. His work is still irreverent (if not more so) and almost frightening in its ability to switch between the glaringly realistic and clownishly absurd within a single sentence. So finding a new volume of his poems was a pleasure.

The second book was more of a surprise. I read Mark Strand's books many years ago and despite my friends' fascination with his work -- and my own best efforts to like it -- I was put off. In fact, rather than growing on me, his work became more painful and annoying over time. To the point where I haven't read any of his work, except a stray poem here or there, for thirty years.

So I don't know what came over me at the bookstore but I picked up Strand's latest book, Man and Camel, and started leafing through it. Rather than flipping through a couple of pages, grunting disapprovingly and putting it back, as I expected to do, I found myself attracted to the poems I read. Why? They were recognizably Mark Strand poems with his spare, objective writing style. But something was different. Something held my attention, was speaking to me like his previous work never had.

Maybe it was just the one or two poems. Maybe I was in an overly receptive mood and tomorrow I would wake up and recognize the poems for the pretensions they ultimately were. Whatever. I was intrigued enough to take a chance and buy the book.

And a good thing I did. Despite whatever reservations I had, the book turns out to be one of the best books I have read this year.

But how did this happen? What makes this book different than the rest of Strand's works I read before? Did I misjudge the earlier ones?

Unlike Tate, where there was a clear change in style and content, Mark Strand's writing doesn't appear to have changed. Either there was a change in my perception of his work or something more subtle was going on. So when I got Man and Camel home, I not only read it but pulled out his older books and started looking through them to find out what had happened.

It turns out my tastes haven't changed, at least that much. I still have difficulty reading Strand's earlier work, like Reasons for Moving and Darker. At the same time, my suspicions are correct: that earlier writing and his recent book are very, very similar. Which baffled me further.

At first I suspected it was something specific but minute, like a change in verb tense or a switch from second to first person. Because the new poems at least seem more personal:

On a warm night in June
I went to the lake, got on all fours,
and drank like an animal. Two horses
came up beside me to drink as well.
This is amazing, I thought, but who will believe me?

from "Two Horses"

But looking back at his earlier poems, many of them are in the first person as well, like this poem from Reasons for Moving:

A man has been standing
in front of my house
for days. I peek at him
from the living room
window and at night,
unable to sleep,
I shine my flashlight
down on the lawn.
He is always there.

from "The Tunnel"

These poems demonstrate the consistency of Strand's style and tone over time -- a sense that you were reading the diary of a visitor from a strange but parallel universe. But at the same time, these poems hint at the difference.

In Man and Camel, Strand the narrator is not so definitive, not quite so self-assured as before. In "The Tunnel", as in the majority of Strand's earlier work, the actions are absolute, unequivocal, as if the narrator controlled his (or her) own destiny, as bizarre as that might be. Later in the poem he says:

I weep like a schoolgirl
and make obscene gestures
through the window. I
write large suicide notes
and place them so he
can read them easily.
I destroy the living
room furniture to prove
I own nothing of value.

In Man and Camel, the actions are not so definitive, not so much like some magical incantation. But at the same time, they seem more realistic and more humane. Again, from "Two Horses":

The horses eyed me from time to time, snorting
and nodding. I felt the need to respond, so I snorted,too,
but haltingly, as though not really wanting to be heard.
The horses must have sensed that I was holding back.
They moved slightly away...

"From time to time", "as though", "moved slightly away". The language is approximate, like human perception is. And the reaction is equally based on assumption rather than fact; the narrator "felt the need" and the horses "must have sensed".

Now, not all of Strand's new poems are as equivocal as "Two Horses". Many still carry the absolute statements familiar from his early work. But the overwhelming feeling is that there is human frailty involved, even if it is simply the uncertainty of the narrator's own perception. This may be a small point, a tiny point, but it makes a world of difference in the poems themselves.

The absolutism of Strand's early work is what affords the poems their power, a sort of magical aura based on the incantations of the narrator. And it is that power that my friends saw and appreciated. The problem is that if you have any doubt in the narrator's authenticity -- if you don't accept the absolute statement -- the spell is broken and the poem fails and fails badly. It becomes unbelievable. My problem was that I didn't accept many of the narrator's absolutes.

The change I see in Strand's latest work as represented by Man and Camel is the narrator's acceptance of his own fallibility. This not only makes the narrator seem more human and more believable, it makes them more empathetic and powerful as a consequence. The narrator is not me, the reader. Strand's poems still take place in a world apart from reader. But now the narrator could be the reader, if the reader inhabited that world. And that makes all the difference.

The Web Litmus Test

[Editorial Note: At first I was doubtful about posting a concept I developed ten years ago. However, just the other day someone called me looking for a designer/developer. When I suggested doing an architectural design for the site content first, he said "we have all the content. What my boss wants is to make sure the site is flashy and cool." I guess we haven't made that much progress in ten years....]

Web design is a tricky business. there are so many conflicting requirements to consider, as well as rapidly shifting expectations on the part of the users as the web grows and evolves.

On the positive side, there is no shortage of guidelines and recommendations for designing web sites to make them usable and functional. However, despite this guidance, there are still sites that are simply "unusable" at a higher level. Sites that aggravate, annoy, insult, confuse, or simply bore their users. Why?

The fact is that most usability guidelines operate at a rather low, micro level dealing with specific interface artifacts and interactions: the placement of buttons, the arrangement of forms, the structure and consistency of the navigation, etc. These attributes certainly impact the usability of web sites and shouldn't be ignored. But often when a web site fails it fails on a much larger, dramatic scale. It fails because it doesn't offer what the user wants.

It is not possible to provide a simple set of design rules that guarantee a successful web site. There is just too much variation in the intent and purpose of sites to cover all circumstances. But there are a few basic measures -- what I call the web litmus test -- that can fairly consistently tell if a web site design will fail or not. Passing the test does not guarantee success; it only means your site has a chance of succeeding. But fail the test and your site is toast.

As I say, the web litmus test can't be used to design sites -- there is much more skill and experience required to design the site right from the beginning -- and that is where the art and science of information architecture comes in. But the test can be a very quick and useful reality check that anyone can perform for designs before they get implemented or for existing sites planning a redesign.

Seven Characteristics of Human Behavior that Affect Web Design

The problem is often not the design but the site itself -- what the site is doing or trying to achieve. It is not failure to implement, it is a failure of intent. The seeds of failure are planted early and concern the basic impulses that drive the creation of the site from the very beginning.

There are two separate sets of goals that control any web site: the goals of the visitors -- or audience -- and the goals of the owner -- or sponsor -- of the site. Those driving impulses are different for every site, but fall into seven basic categories.


For the visitor, there are only four possible goals:

• Help me find something
• Help me do something
• Help me fix something
• Once I have satisfied all three of the above, entertain me!

As I said, the specifics of what the visitor wants to find, do, or fix are different for each site they visit. (I wouldn't try to buy a vacuum cleaner from www.bmw.com, but figuring out why my current vacuum is making so much noise is a likely goal for a visitor to www.kirby.com.) With the exception of people simply "channel surfing" the web, the goals of all of your visitors fall into one of these four categories.

From the other perspective, the web site owner has only three basic intentions:

• Let me tell you something
• Let me sell you something
• Let me impress you!

These three impulses apply to all websites, even non-commercial web sites. (For non-commercial sites, "sell" can be interpreted figuratively to be an attempt to persuade the visitors to take some action: sign a petition, join an organization, etc.)

Achieving Alignment

It would seem, at first glance that aligning the needs of the owners and the audience should be simple: you want to find something and we want to sell something! Unfortunately, in practice the priorities and order of importance are often askew.

Site owners often focus on their last impulse first: let me impress you. At this point, it is fairly well accepted that elaborate flash intros to web sites are more annoying than effective. However they are still very prevalent.

Similarly, the days of commercial internet sites proudly displaying a photo and message from the CEO as a home page are pretty much over. However, many corporate intranets are still littered with web sites that prominently display a photograph of the manager, an org chart, and list of "news" stories and other managerial announcements. How does this help their employees find, do, or fix anything?

But the real problem is that the web site needs to address all of the visitors' possible needs, not just the one or two that match the owners' goals. Even if you can get past the sponsor's desire to turn impressiveness into a requirement, there is still too often a narrow focus on what the company wants to achieve and not what the users expect.

Note that addressing the needs of the visitors is not the same as solving them. If you are a manufacturer, you don't have to sell online. But you can expect at least some of your site's visitors will be looking to buy your goods, so you better tell them where they can buy your items rather than leaving them to vainly search your site and give up in frustration.


How to Use the Web Litmus Test

So, how do you apply the web litmus test? It is simple. Try this 15 minute experiment:

1. Pick a site on the internet. Any site. (If you have a commercial site on the internet I would suggest not starting with that one. It is hard to be objective the first time.)
2. Take 2 minutes to make a list of the things that site's visitors would want to find, do, or fix.
3. Spend 3 minutes trying to perform each activity from the web site's home page.

The key points to note here are that the web litmus test is in no way a complete analysis of a web site. Its goal is to test the site's main features against the visitors' main goals and nothing more. So don't try to go into too much detail.

Keep it short. 1-3 specific tasks for each of the visitor goals is more than enough. And if you can't complete a task in 3 minutes, you are already spending more time than the majority of visitors would before giving up in disgust.

Again, it is not a test of the entire site. It doesn't matter whether a specific function exists on the site, but whether someone can find it in an acceptable amount of time. This is why you should always start at the home page (as visitors are likely to do).

But the best way to understand the web litmus test is to see it in action, so let's try a few of examples...

Continue to examples of the web litmus test in action