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Writing Electronic Poetry Loss Pequeño Glazier's "Digital Poetics. The Making of E-Poetries" by Janez
Strehovec
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The stagnation and
repetition of already past contents and forms within
contemporary poetry accompanies the absence of inventive
literary criticism and theory, which in encountering
contemporary poetry does not seem to know how to develop new
concepts and paradigms. It is no coincidence that in
comprehensive Readers & Guides within the field of
contemporary literary theory, there are hardly any
contributions on the analysis of contemporary poetry. In the
middle of the last century, Martin Heidegger formed a whole
set of basic paradigms for his philosophical thought through
his encounters with Hölderlin's and Rilke's poetry.
Also, Walter Benjamin's most striking concepts in his essays
on Paris as the capital of the 19th century were developed
by analysing Baudelaire's poetry and Baudelaire's attitude
to life in big cities. Can we at all imagine today's leading
theoreticians in philosophy and cultural studies finding any
inspiration of worth for their theoretical work in the field
of today's poetry? In a world of multiculturalism,
globalism, post-colonialism, dot.com society, new media,
techno science and new language encouraged by on-line
communication, poets are not asking themselves about
authentic forms of poetry-making today. They do not pose fundamental
questions on subjectivity within the expanded concept of
textuality, creativity of language in dialogue with the
trendy netspeak and with the language of commercial
messaging. They are not familiar enough with the question:
"Why have the lyric today and not only in trendy loops of
self unwinding messages of music videos?" Alternately, is
today's poetry still at all concerned about forming lyrical
atmospheres? Is it not perhaps, more appropriate to look for
the creative layers of language, with the help of different
paradigms, let us say, in the form of digital writing
stimulated by the trendy "mix, cuts and scratches" culture?
Lyrical, distinctly subtle atmospheres, today undoubtedly
still exist, however, we are perhaps looking for them in the
wrong places, for it appears that the lyric is being
deteritorialised. This is why it seems that authentic poetry
occurs only when the author places the institution of poetry
itself under question, writes even against its canons and
creatively looks for answers also in the interactions of
poetic language with the new media. It is absolutely clear
that such subtle creativity as poetry will probably always
remain, as far as readers are concerned, condemned to the
"the happy few". All respect is also due to the very
esoteric nature of poetry, however, this does still not
mean, that it needs to definitely lock itself away into an
ivory tower and leave out the experimentation and
interaction of "unpoetic reality". In his book on the language
of new media, Lev Manovich finds that the tradition of the
printed word is deteriorating in the present, as the
mainstream within modern society is directed towards
presenting as much information as possible in "the form of
time-based audiovisual moving image sequences, rather than
as text" (Manovich 2002:78). The language of film, rather
than that of the printed text, is becoming more popular to
younger generations. Does the author of this notion have a
point? He does, if he is thinking exclusively about printed
text, however, today e-textuality also exists that takes
into account time-based moving text sequences, which means
that we are encountering film-text that in its articulation
often follows the paths and procedures of a film aesthetic
and poetics. (For example, suspense in Claire Dinsmore's
kinetic poem, The Dazzle As Question, which works on
the reader's uncertainty as to where the new unit of kinetic
text will appear on the screen, which means that the
reception of this poem is not a "safe ride".) Besides
poetry-as-we-know-it, by which we mean, metric textuality in
printed verse (books, journals) and Concrete and Visual
Poetry, as well as other neo avant-garde forms of
poetry-making tied to the printed medium, which take into
account also the spatial syntax and destabilise the
traditional medium of the verse, e-poetry also co-exists
today, which is tied to the development of the new media and
its advances, especially the computer. This type of creativity (at
the moment it has an altogether marginal status) is a big
challenge for both poets-programmers and theoreticians
since, for e-poetry, a programmable nature of textuality is
essential, as well as, text displayed in the computer window
(with its own specificity), digitalisation and also new
forms of perception that are based on "reading with the
mouse" as an activity, which is far more complex than
traditional reading, which in turn, is based on following
the noted syntax in a linear fashion and turning pages. In
English and Spanish writing, poet and scholar Loss
Pequeño Glazier, otherwise also director of
Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY in Buffalo, has accepted
the challenge of this emerging new field and has tried, in
his Digital Poetics, to define the specificities of
e-poetry from the poet's, as well as scholar's viewpoint. In
this book, Glazier discusses three principal forms of
electronic textuality: hypertext, visual/kinetic text, and
e-poetry pieces in programmable media. He considers
avant-garde poetics and its relationship to the on-line age,
the relationship between Web "pages" and book technology,
and the way in which certain kinds of Web constructions are
in and of themselves a type of writing. The first question in
e-poetry, which in its kinetic, animated and ergodic poetry,
hyperpoetry, code poetry and poetry generators variations,
falls into the expanded concept of textuality and new media,
is the question connected with the nature of the medium
itself, which is something that the author of this book
(that was not actually written in one go but predominantly
links essays and papers which were previously published in
various e-zines and journals) was aware of himself.
Certainly this is why already his opening definitions and
illuminations dealing with the code of e-poetry and its
perception as well as with the spaces of e-writing in
general, are of importance to this field. "Writing in
electronic media, whether simple Web pages, text generated
by an algorithm, or pages that display kinetically, is
writing that exists within specific conditions of
textuality. Such writing has different properties than the
writing to which we are accustomed" (2).Amongst these
properties, it is important that the word does not take on
the function of physical object but rather is displayed and
programmed. We meet with "smart" parts that function as
writing about a subject and at the same time also about a
medium, with the help of which they become mediators, for we
write with words but at the same time we must also take into
account grammar and the politics of code. Electronic poetry
expands the space of poetry and also that of its perception.
It is here that the eye is clearly active for, in this type
of reading-looking-decoding, more effort and attention is
required than in turning pages during the reading of a book
or magazine. An important quality of e-texts is also their
malleability and this malleability's related
characteristics, which arise due to the flickering and
fragile signifier. We are meeting a text that functions as a
body, which can be manipulated with a series of programme
commands. Glazier, who in the field of
theory quotes a lot from McGann's text The Textual
Condition, is certainly not only a theoretician but also
a practician in the field of writing and programming
e-poetry, even one of the pioneers within electronic kinetic
poetry (in the book he often asks himself about the role of
poet as programmer). This is why the chapters in Digital
Poetics devoted to the programming of e-poetry and
e-textuality in general, are undoubtedly important, for
example, in chapter Hypertext/Hyperpoesis/Hyperpoetics in
which he discusses also the alphabet of coding and largely
looks into applications in the HTML language in the field of
e-poetry. In this, he is discovering the richness of poetic
language on the basis of including signs that do not have
the characteristics of the alphabet but function as visual
tropes and also have rhythmical qualities. Here we should
also mention a special chapter of this book in which Grazier
talks of the importance of the "grep" command in e-poetry;
otherwise he has expressed his affinity for meaningful code
in writing poetry, by saying that also "writing a 'href' is
writing "(3). What kind of book is
Digital Poetics? Is it merely a specialist book meant
to raise questions about the pure theory of e-poetry? Not at
all. In terms of genres, this book is by no account united,
including literary-theoretical writing and approach
influenced by theories on the new media intertwined with
poetics as the poet's (self)reflection on poetry-making
under conditions of digital code. A noticeable part of this
reader-friendly book (there are lots of examples and
illustrations) is also dedicated to the historical overview
of e-poetry, followed by an overview of important
international studies in the field of e-poetry. At the same
time the author also dedicates special attention to
reflections on possible perspectives of this type of
creativity. One of the more important chapters in this book
is therefore dedicated to the historical overview and a
genuine inventory of digital poetry between the years 1970
and 2001, in which the author shows much attention to also
considering digital poetry from outside the Anglo-American
territory. Here he justifiably draws our attention to the
important contribution of French and Brazilian
e-poetry. Glazier's book opens up a
series of questions on poetry-making and the conditions
inside which e-poetry is written/programmed and distributed,
as well as, questions on its perception and
institutionalisation. The author's surveys and chronologies
are exhausting, even though he leaves out certain authors
and phenomena (for example, text based electronic
installations, web poetry objects and projects by Mez, Alain
Sondheim and Simon Biggs) that have an important place,
especially in the field of introducing programming languages
into e-poetry. Also, some of the more prominent
theoreticians within this field have been omitted (for
example, the German authors Florian Cramer, and Roberto
Simanowski and Central and Eastern Europe
scholars). In the USA predominantly,
hypertext was (especially in the genre of hyperfiction) for
a long period accepted as a basic model for writing in the
electronic medium, even though the specificity of the new
medium comes to the fore more in other, more often,
minimalist and within coded language intertwined forms. One
of the most important things in Glazier's book is, for
exactly this reason, his critical "dialogue" with the
hypertextual medium, in which he has, even with regard to
Mary-Laure Ryan's standpoint towards this problematic topic,
written: "We need to ask ourselves what is the actual
advance of the new medium, in order to define writing that
will put that medium to task. The basic defining feature of
hypertext, its ability to link, is operationally identical
to the codex with its footnotes, index, table of contents,
see also's, lists of prior publications, parenthetical
asides, and numerous other devices of multilinearity" (4).
The author of Digital Poetics is therefore closer to
a textual experience that is "less about telling a story and
more like a plunge into pure textual possibility"
(5). Important is also his notion
that poetry, not prose, is the arena for the e-medium to be
explored and that poetry needs to be active in inventing the
future of the word. As examples of creative searching in
this direction he mentions some works of poetry by John
Cayley, Jim Rosenberg, Eduard Kac and his own, leaving out
many, let us say, pioneers in the fields of poetry
generators, text based electronic installations and code
poetry. Glazier also directs our
attention towards the widest conditions of e-poetry for he
is dealing with questions of architecture of Web pages, with
the specificity of the World Wide Web, and with questions on
the nature of the electronic medium itself, even though, we
must emphasise, he does not go into any particular
philosophical depth of writing or writing stimulated by
cultural studies of new technologies (also his possible
dialog with striking notions and devices from
state-of-the-art literary theories, e.g. by Wolfgang Iser is
lacking), but predominantly remains with the medium of
poetics, even with the history of e-poetry, which does
actually constitute for an important contribution in this
book. E-poetry is a new field, similarly to its theory,
which is only slowly placing itself into academic
institutions. (Between the Academy and a Hard Drive,
is ironically named the Epilogue of Glazier's
book.) Glazier's Digital
Poetics, pioneering the striking and provoking field of
e-poetry, would make useful reading not only for poets of
the e-medium, but for all poets today. The more demanding
reader however, would find it difficult to find any
consistent and pure (literary) theory of e-poetry in this
book. On the other hand, with this book, the genre of
poetics is excellently affirmed and justified, which is due
to its close intertwining with contemporary art and theory a
very logical field, proper for the conceptualisation of
contemporary poetry. How is poetry possible today? What is
poetry that is extended beyond the lyric? Why poetry and not
a condensed, macdonaldised textuality of comics and placed
in clouds commentaries featured alongside music videos? How
do the lyric and its subject function today? These are
questions that should be considered and used more often by
poets especially in view of today's little inventive
situation in this field. Is our note too critical
toward contemporary print based poetry and does it try to
sway towards preferring e-poetry, which is more often
generated by powerful visual special effects? Not at all.
E-poetry is only among the genres of poetry today that
belong to the expanded concept of poetry. It is a practice
which is undoubtedly only at the beginning and is more often
closer to new (above all visual) media than
poetry-as-we-know-it. (Brian Kim Stefans finishes his
statement on his kinetic e-piece A dreamlife of letters with
"Thanks for watching" and not "Thanks for reading".) A
series of theoretical devices for it yet need to be
invented; let us just think of perception of e-poetry
objects, which includes, among others, "mouse reading",
perception of the whole mosaic-like screen in one quick
snapshot and jumpy reading, full of forward glimpses and
backward glances. With this note we have tried to draw
attention to the complex position of today's literary/poetry
coded textuality, for which it can undoubtedly be said, as
T.W. Adorno has written on art: "It is self evident that
nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its
inner life, not its relation to the world, not even its
right to exist". (6) Poetry is also no longer a
self-evident field but an area, which must constantly strive
to rescue the word from the mainstream of verbal triviality
and banalness and creatively preserve its authority in the
face of macdonalisations and MTV-fication. This is the task
for both, poets working in print-based poetry and
poets-programmers of e-poetry. Loss
Pequeño Glazier: Notes: (1) Lev Manovich , The
Language of New Media, Cambridge, Mass.:The MIT Press, 2002,
p.78 |