I stopped blogging almost 7 years ago on June 21, 2009. I don’t recall the reasons, perhaps it was just the time demands of graduate school or the mental and emotional exhaustion that tend to accompany those studies. For whatever reason, I wrote a post about my late father on Father’s Day, marking the silence and his absence, then did not return.
It’s true, I’ve been busy. Writing and defending the dissertation, completing the second book of poetry and finding it a home, searching for a teaching position in the post-Ph.D. world, and in general, trying to make sense of the world and its unexpected twists and turns. I’m grateful for my successes and thankful to have the opportunity to try again when I’m not. I think in some respects I stopped blogging simply because I didn’t have the energy to keep going. I think at the time I was also more enamored with Facebook and other more immediate forms of social interaction. There were a lot of reasons. Now things have come full circle. I’m ready to return to a quieter space where I have more room and time to unfold my thoughts. So here I am, back in the poetry blog-o-sphere, doing my thing.
In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be writing on a wide variety of topics. I’m working on a post about the absent recluse figure in classical Chinese poetry (somewhat appropriate given my own long absence), as well as some more practical posts about starting new writing projects, navigating the uncharted terrain of launching a second book, and my efforts to create useful online literary resources.