The integration of technology in poetry is a fairly new concept for me, especially as it is approached in the 21st century. Although I am awar of the integral role that new technology always played in liberating poetry from its past limitations of form and syntax, I was not aware that a huge body of such experimental poetry existed before the 70's, or that it has burgeoned and expanded in different directions as it has.
The other night, my search for experimental poetry yielded a myriad of different poems, among them interactive pieces and poems in which an attempt has been made to follow a basic structure of simple web coding. It was a little overwhelming to try and trace the origins while getting a general idea of how each is developing its own branches and establishing a place for itself in the minds (and maybe hearts?) of poetry readers.
It's a little intimidating to just begin writing about a topic when I know next to nothing about it. So far, my blogging endeavours focused on topics of familiarity but alll of a sudden, I have to blog about something new and very complex. It's kind of like coming upon a spiderweb and having to find its centre and where it begins. It's impossible. Maybe it's not even necessary. Maybe a more holistic and open ended exploration will leave me with a deeper appreciation of how artists have used technology to build and enhance their works of art.
After all, a majority of such experimental poetry is a deprarture from linear thought and conventional structure. It's meant to be taken in as little bits and pieces of thought and reassembled within the mind of the reader. It's an invitation for interpretation and dialogue. Sometimes its unnerving even - maybe an invitation to step back from what grade school teachers drilled into our minds regardng proper models of self-expression.
All in all, it's an invitation to play and engage the imagination. The format is different. The words often collide and create unexpected reactions. How can I expect to tackle this topic in the usual way? I suppose I could write reflection poems and essays and indulge in reading long theoretical papers that analyze the function of technology in poetry but I don't think any of these things alone would do the topic justice.
Besides, this is all very new to me and I don't feel that I have covered enough ground at this point to be able to expound on this topic in an engaging way.
I can only hope that you will join me in exploring the possibilities of integrating technology in poetry in meaningful ways.
My initial impression of poems that explore this relationship between poetry and technology is that there is a certain playfulness about these pieces that cannot be accomplished without the technology that is utilized but then the poems hold all meaning in playing with structures of language but onten the resulting texts don't offer meaning of their own in the traditional sense.
What is actually written on the page takes a back seat to how it is written and how individual readers react to the pieces. Many of the poems are not even written in the language that we customarily reserve for poetic expressions. It's hard to pin point what it is that is lacking from many of these poems but its an issue of lacking fluidity in establishing relation between the different parts. It's as if a child deconstructed something beautiful and forgot to reassemble it, as if mankind has grown tired with its ability and drive for creating meaning and conceptualizing beauty.
This is the case with most of the interactive poetry games that I've seen and a lot of concrete poems that I found over the last few days. Perhaps I have not yet cracked the codes of these poetic forms and that's why I can only see the surface play of reflections...I like to think that there might be a deeper meaning and I am still open to it, but I feel that the greatest meaning of poetry as always been the relationship between the lyrical qualities of a poem and its inner and outer layers of meaning.
This important interplay between the elements of a poem is not completely lost in video poems, which I will probably dedicate a whole post to! For now, I'd recommend taking a look at the video poems in the link on the side bar of my blog for an idea of how moving images can add new dimensions to poems. Not all of them are good by any means, and good is a subjectivve and vauge assessment, but the few included do offer something in terms of content and the seamless integration of technology within poetry.
I'd like to remind you that his is just an initial reflection, and is not meant to be a serious commentary on a subject that I am not qualified to write about in any serious way. This will probably end up being more of a database of experimental poetry and maybe a home to some of my own experiments at some point.
Happy Long Weekend!
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