Jee Leong Koh
So, I have been aimlessly blogging around on a snow-bound Sunday evening, and I try some of the links on Rob Mackenzie's estimable poetry site Surroundings and I run across this guy again - Jee Leong Koh, at his personal poetry blog Song of the Reformed Headhunter, an ex-pat from Singapore, who now lives in Queens, after surviving a poetry MFA program.
I know Jee from Poetry Free-for-all, an online poetry critique site (which, however, I DON'T recommend - clunky site design, and lame critique - Eratosphere, for Formal Verse, and The Gazebo, for Free Verse, are much better!)
From the blog I learn that Jee has done two, out of three, very cool things for a writing MFA. He has posted drafts in online critique sites (and his blog) - which I already knew - and he "regularly" reads at a local Open Mic.
The third cool thing he didn't do, when I asked him last year, was submit to our now-moribund poetry journal, Ephemeris.
Alas! Because Jee is very good - stronger now than when I encountered him PFFA…just hit the link, will'ya?
Andrew
I know Jee from Poetry Free-for-all, an online poetry critique site (which, however, I DON'T recommend - clunky site design, and lame critique - Eratosphere, for Formal Verse, and The Gazebo, for Free Verse, are much better!)
From the blog I learn that Jee has done two, out of three, very cool things for a writing MFA. He has posted drafts in online critique sites (and his blog) - which I already knew - and he "regularly" reads at a local Open Mic.
The third cool thing he didn't do, when I asked him last year, was submit to our now-moribund poetry journal, Ephemeris.
Alas! Because Jee is very good - stronger now than when I encountered him PFFA…just hit the link, will'ya?
Andrew
posted by NokoRose at 5:50 AM
3 Comments:
Yes, Jee goes from strength to strength.
I agree that Erato is the place to go for critique and discussion on formal poetry. But I can't see how Pffa's Advanced and Underground forums could be considered to have weaker critique than the Gazebo. I've seen very good and very bad critique on both boards. The Gaz is certainly busier at the moment and the critiques come faster. But better? I'm not so sure about that.
Thanks for the mention, by the way. I've been meaning to add you to my links. I'll go and do it now before I forget.
I find much of the critiquing at Erato concerned with form to the detriment of meaning. To borrow from a very smart lady, too many formalists are writing (and getting praised for) writing the poetic equivalent of doilies--pretty but pointless.
Jee is beyond that, for certain.
Julie
Yes, I agree with Julie on that. Sometimes too on Erato, the critics don't seem to understand that metrical poems can be loosely metrical. We're not all strict formalists. I never post poems in loose metre there because of that.
On the other hand, the knowledge that many of the posters have of metrical poetry and of how metre works means that I rarely pay a visit there without learning something.
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