I started this blog over a year ago — I don’t even remember exactly when — and have posted very little during that time.  Once or twice a month at most.  At first, it was because I had another, personal blog, to which I posted daily.  But the time came to end that blog (too much personal stuff that needed to disappear and way too much Internet drama) and I still didn’t post much to this one.  I think I had a very narrow idea of what a poetry blog could be.  I figured I would talk about poetry, and poetry alone.  Clearly that strategy isn’t working for me.  The thing is, I’m not at all a literary intellectual.  Yeah, I’ve got a master’s degree, and I’m better read than the average person, but I’m pretty inarticulate when it comes to actually discussing that stuff.  Which is why I’ll never be a brilliant lit critic.  I’ll stick to the lowbrow poetry-writing, thank you.

So what’s been prompting me to write here lately?  Three times this week already!  I’ll tell you: Kate Gale’s blog.  Kate is my friend, and my boss of sorts, and has taught me things about the literary world that I doubt I would have learned anywhere else.  But she’s also a compelling writer.  She started blogging daily just a few months ago, and I added her to my Google Reader thinking I’d check every now and again (plus in one early post she called me “sexy” and at that moment she became my favorite writer of all time.  Because I’m easy like that.)  But what I found is that she doesn’t just blog about writing, publishing, and literature — she blogs about everything she’s thinking about on a given day.  And frankly, I find it riveting.

The other blog I just started reading is Tim Green’s blog.  Tim is the editor of Rattle and is one of the coolest and nicest people I’ve met in the lit world.  Plus, he shares my fascination with quantum physics, which is a trait that will earn a person my friendship for life.  Anyway, Tim’s blog is about poetry and writing and publishing, but he writes with a smart, yet conversational tone and brings in all kinds of fresh ideas, and it’s just a really good read.

So I decided that I’m going to expand my narrow vision of what a poetry blog can be, and I’m going to write about whatever I like here.  It will probably be lit-heavy, but I’m not going to beat myself over the head if I don’t somehow link what I’m thinking about to writing or publishing.  I really miss connecting with the world through a blog, so stay tuned for Deep Thoughts By Laurie (or not so deep, more likely), and check back often.