Age of blog: 8 years
Total number of posts: 3,528
Total number of archive pages @ 10 posts/page: 353
Comments (since April 1, 2006): 19,051
Categories: 40
Category with the most posts: Poems & poem-like things (1,306)
Tags: 652
Series: 25
Active plugins: 15
Average page views per month: 15,000
Busiest day: October 6, 2011 (2,919 views)
Most popular post: Tree stands (15,326 views)
Total word count: 1,364,021
Average words per post: 386
Wordiest post: Festival of the Trees 1 (5,113 words)
Wordiest post that didn’t include a ton of quotes: Monsters of God (4,624 words)
Wordiest month: April 2004 (40,945 words)
Least wordy month: September 2009 (3,186 words)
Dave’s total word count: 1,288,732
Dave’s average words per post: 409
Luisa’s total word count: 55,865
Luisa’s average words per post: 152
Number of times Via Negativa has been hacked: 2
Number of times Via Negativa has moved to a new web host: 3
Via Negativa is older than: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, this mountain in Iceland, my niece Elanor, and my relationships with more than a dozen dear friends, scores of great writers and countless other interesting folks whom I’ve met through blogging.
Thanks to the WP Word Count plugin, by Brian J. Link, for all the word-count statistics.
“…I’d just like
to put my head on the pillow
while the storm still rages, and rest.”
~ Richard Jones
They say it’s quiet in the lull
of a storm, in the heart of chaos.
There are pockets of air in the dead
center of a piece of moldy bread;
and a shiny speck of copper where
rust and oil have not worn down
the coin. There are at least two
spaces between the gecko’s calls
—enough time for an engine
to sputter to life, for flame
to spurt out of the match; for
the faltering wheel to right it-
self, as it goes down the path.
Bits of white suspended in solution
swirled past the window after every upheaval.
I found a pencil with a blessing on the side
& decided to start a list
of everywhere I’d been.
I filled three notebooks just with the hiding places
in my parents’ house. At this rate, I realized,
the pencil would be gone
before I made it halfway to the street.
Under my hat my hair continued to grow.
The pilot light burned like an insomniac
in the back of the oven.
Low afternoon sunlight bathes the end of a log — a tree brought low by the ice storm of ’05 and cut to clear the trail. Walking with others, I have time only for one quick snap in passing. What attracts my eye? The red, the green, the pattern of white lichen. Later, looking at it on the screen, I realize that in its slow smolder of decay it has gathered all the colors of the Christmas season (though our only white so far has shrunk to a small patch of snow on the north side of the spruce grove). And looking at the lichen, I think: teeth. Big back molars, packed tight in an impossibly capacious jaw.
I have too much to chew on this month. Beyond a certain point, the chewed becomes the chewer, setting the gut to permanent churn. At the merest slight we light up like Christmas, but for the wrong reasons. Combustion comes in many forms, and some give off more heat than light. Starved of oxygen, for example, is possible to smolder in such a way that one turns almost entirely to charcoal — no ash for de-icing or the caustic lye, nothing but the fabled anti-gift, a stocking stuffer from Krampus.
I don’t look at my video stats very often, so I had no idea until tonight that the most-watched videopoem I’ve ever made is also my longest: “Fly Away Home,” for a poem I wrote called “Harlequin Ladybird,” has been played 915 times, despite being over five minutes long.
As I note on Vimeo, it’s as much a music video as it is a videopoem. I imagine the music (by Polish composer efiel on Jamendo) has a lot to do with its relative popularity. One thing I don’t mention in the notes is that I subsequently realized the last phrase of the poem — “small, bad heart” — was involuntarily plagiarized from Louise Glück. Which isn’t a big enough deal to make me want to take down the video altogether, but it will certainly keep me from ever adding it to a print collection.
In second place, with 648 plays, is the video I made with my translation of Lorca’s “Gacela of Unforeseen Love,” starring a housefly.
I chalk that up to the popularity of Lorca and searches for that poem by name. It also helps that both videos have been up for almost two years. In two more years, I imagine my videos for poems by Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda and Gabriela Mistral will lead the pack.
Just to keep this in perspective, my most popular video upload of any kind is “Argument with a Porcupine,” which has been viewed 129,806 times on YouTube.
And just to keep that in perspective, I call your attention to “Porcupine who thinks he is a puppy!“: 2,474,271 views. Which may not have anything to do with poetry, but warms my heart nonetheless. Hurrah for porcupines!
One day when I was 14
I found a ground
beetle under my bed—
glossy black,
fast & furtive.
I grabbed a thick book
& beat it to death.
I liked beetles but
this one frightened me.
It belonged under rocks
in the forest, not two feet
below my pillow,
burrowing through the carpet
while I slept.
My voice was changing.
The beetle disposed of,
life went on as before
but in a lower key.
