This blogger was once a "semifinalist" at Poetry.com. Think we should tell these guys about it?

There's a part of us that's geeky, and another part that writes poetry. Evidently, on April 1st, our inner geek won, because we were charged up with the Gmail announcement to the exclusion of all us. So, today, to make up, we won't say anything about the Goog's valueing its IPO at US# 3.3 billion, and make amends by telling you that on also April 1st, Foetry launched. Since then, according to Stephen Burt at the Boston Globe, Foetry (who announce themselves thus: "American Poetry Watchdog, Exposing the fraudulent 'contests.' Tracking the sycophants. Naming names.") has been raising hackles, comment and quite a bit of dust. Says Burt, "Foetry reads like a cross between the Drudge Report and Consumer Reports, anonymously investigating (and spreading) rumors to further the cause of transparency." There's much debate both for and against the site, apparently, and as the report goes on to say, "Perhaps the clearest point Foetry proves is one neither defenders nor detractors notice. Randall Jarrell wrote 50 years ago that the loudest controversies in the arts were matters "from which the art could be almost wholly excluded, leaving nothing but politics and public morality." The chat and the charges on Foetry's message boards are all about poets, but rarely about their poems: Aesthetic matters are almost completely absent, as they would be in a court of law." Read the story here. [Via A&L Daily]