blog = resume: the peacock self

I learned tonight that some faculty look heavily at blogs to determine good candidates for teaching posts; whether these blogs are considered a valuable investment or a detriment was not clear. I find this odd and a bit disconcerting for a few reasons. Namely, should blogs be considered as though they were resumes? and worse, should blogs be considered evidence of reasons to hire or not hire someone? I guess I say "worse" because of the, what seems to me, problematic validity of a blog space.

I guess there could be clear examples of questionable blog content; however, I am concerned not about these cases specifically, though a doctored or fabricated blog claiming to be created by a specific person could be possible (though perhaps an incredible waste of time).

However, as with poetry (at least to the extent I'm hoping this, and the blogs the 305 posse create) there's an extension of authenticity in the creation of these "posts" that does not fit as a "background check." Let me try to explain more clearly what I mean...and maybe this is also my problem with some contemporary poets utilizing this medium for their self-aggrandizement. A blog, or web space in general, is easily a forum, not of communication, but self-promotion and self-marketing. This is fine, in so much as the medium is comfortably and easily already used for this purpose: think pop-up adds, spam e-mail, etc, etc, in terms of unwanted advertisement. But, there's an extent to which this puffing up of self is ridiculous and...well...frustrating.

We've all been to poetry readings where clearly the poetry reading became more of a show of ego, a dance of peacocks strutting and fluttering about; to me, this is not poetry. This is what I mean by “performance” in a pejorative sense. This is not what I want to...or rather, this not, for me, what poetry is supposed to be, or what poetry is called to be.

(Or at least this is true of what I seek to achieve in my work.) Thus, there's a weirdness in somehow attempting to prove worth, in terms of employment value, through a blog; especially considering how poorly paper in general (resume, diploma, etc) really goes in encapsulating the body of a person's worth, achievements, ambitions, etc.

And it does, further, beg the question, what is the current interest by contemporary poets to utilize this medium? What is the fundamental purpose of this medium anyway? Can this be used as something more than ego, as resume, as postured self?