Scarriet?

A Brief Introduction

A website, a school for poets, a forum for debate, a

Silver Door provides weekly original poems along with posts about poetry and its place in the digital age

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Simply put, Scarriet was the inspiration for Silver Door.

And to simplify again, Scarriet, launched in 2009, is the collective writings of poet and critic Thomas Graves, who I’ve already featured on these pages.

Graves, aka Thomas Brady, is a great admirer and emulator of Plato and Poe in particular, as well as the Romantics. He’s a fine poet. I think The Lost Child is one of the great poems written in our fledgling century.

Here are some excerpts from the About Scarriet page:

SCARRIET IS A STRANGE NAME, ISN’T IT?  WELL, THERE’S A FUNNY STORY ABOUT THAT…

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SCARRIET is for both the lay reader and the academic; its pages are sophisticated but accessible.   Publishers and academics, as well as the general public, are welcome to use these pages.

SCARRIET was originally set up, in a quick stroke of genius, by Alan Cordle, in September, 2009, as an alternative to the Poetry Foundation of America’s Blog:HARRIET.

On September 1st, 2009, four individuals were banned from Blog:Harriet without explanation, and found refuge here. They were:

Thomas Brady,  East Coast U.S.A.
Alan Cordle,  West Coast U.S.A.
Desmond Swords, Dublin, Ireland
Christopher Woodman, Chiang Mai, Thailand.

The four simply felt an aversion to the cant, cronyism, and special interests hindering the enjoyment of poetry today.

These posters were followed by a large number of Harriet regulars who also found Harriet’s managerial style, combined with its “thumbs down” voting system, intolerable.

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Back in 2009, the writing and editing of Scarriet was taken on by Christopher Woodman and Thomas Brady.

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In April, 2010, there was an editorial disagreement between Christopher Woodman and Thomas Brady over “March Madness,” which made Scarriet even more popular, but which Mr. Woodman felt was offensive to the Muse.   Everyone thought it best that we part ways, and now I, Thomas Brady, am the sole administrator/editor of Scarriet.

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There is a delicious cast of characters to be found across the site (the About Scarriet page’s comment section is a good place to start) as one navigates its sprawling pages. Graves is very generous with his attention and responds to most all questions and comments (though doesn’t suffer fools).

I’ve been wanting to write about Scarriet for some time but didn’t know where to start. Graves is prolific and has been writing on the site for going on 15 years. One could easily say, just start at the beginning! but unless you have a few months of unlimited free time that isn’t particularly practical.

So while I encourage anyone interested to dive in right away, I also plan to publish something of a Scarriet user guide, or best hits if you will, sometime in the coming months.

Coming to Scarriet as a young poet was formative for me. It taught me that I really didn’t know half as much about poetry as I thought I did, even if I had written thousands of poems. I believe I first read the popular post Why Poetry Sucks Now, which is a good place as any to start.

Scarriet calls for anyone taking poetry seriously to become super-literate.

It sets the bar high.

But will also help pull you up.

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