in the beginning was the scop

2004-09-23T07:04:00.000-07:00

In the beginning was the scop.
Scop: the Old English word for poet.
Scopshop: poetry shop. Poetry workshop.

I've started this blog in the belief that everything worth saying, worth reading, worth remembering, is best said in poetry. And it's my intention--still a bit unformed at this stage--to make this blog a receptacle for such sayings, readings, and rememberings.

Of course this implies a fairly inclusive definition of poetry: from poetic forms proper and per se, to sentences, anecdotes, quips, retorts, witticisms which are what I would call 'poetically' structured: ie, which depend up[on some identifiable, audible, or visible structure for their effect. Most portentously, it might be said this is the assertion of intelligible pattern on, and perhaps against, a random universe, an aleatory experience. (Not that we have any excuse for believing the universe is random; it's just that most of us, most of the time, experience it as such).

A small but relevant example: drawn from the very address of this blog. I wanted to call it scopshop: for reasons given. The person who prompted me to start this blog, Roy Johnson (who runs a blog of his own at mantex.blogspot.com) advised me against using this title for a blog, because "scopshop.blogspot" would sound awkward. True. But as I thought about it, there was a certain attraction in having the single vowel 'o' used in the adress. Like one of those Oulipo experiments...a novel without the letter 'e', etc. So scopshop.blogspot it is, rather than skipship.plugspat or any of the other variants.

So much in the beginning. It is my hope ther is more to come.