THE INCONSEQUENTIALITY OF BLURBS

I know I've got direct credentials as well as having edited fiction, not to mention just having released a novel (grin), but it still feels weird to be working on a blurb for a fiction book.

I sort of think asking a poet to blurb fiction is to give up on the idea of its commercial possibilities, possibilities that have always rarely existed for poetry. Perhaps this is a sign of the times?

Maybe fiction is just following in poetry's footsteps. To wit, have you noticed more and more that -- no doubt with the proliferation of printing technologies that ramp up the number of published poetry collections -- more blurbers are not necessarily "established" poets (however one defines "established") but simply other poets who've mustered respect in their own quarters of the poetry world? Nor does it matter anyway in terms of sales as the impact of blurbs on sales is insignificant when poetry sales in general is insignificant (?).

Now, we get to a situation like I'm in where Moi is giving a blurb to a fiction work. Hey, I like the writer's work and don't mind doing so. But ...

... Or maybe just another possibility exists. Perhaps the fiction world is just dying to hear from Moi! Maybe I'm HOT! and didn't know it! (Ah the stuff I say before that proverbial first cup of java....)

Or, I need to focus on novelizing THIS!

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