No problems with this, cris, and I'm nervously aware of the care required
when waving big brushes, especially in small places like little list-posts
where oddly they seem to appear more often than in the open.
I think quite simply that the potential for publishing or circulating poetry
on the web etc is huge, gaspishly wondrous. But I am wary at the way
manageability is taking over that potential and too how the focus is
slipping to what is easily explicable and superficially glam, the Tech of
it, while what is potentailly imponderable, recalcitrant to explication, and
unsettlingly questionable even, that problem we all enjoy, even as it
tortures us, namely poetry, is dipping out of the focus.
Here I must say something heretical. I do NOT think much of Alan Sondheim's
writing.
When I first encountered his pieces I liked them, they seemed bright and
inventive. Then I saw more, and more, for he most certainly is not backward
in publishing them.
And I started to realise I couldn't remember the last one I read, no, sorry,
'saw'.
Nor the one before nor...
Because it seems as if he has invented a new thing: the instant disposable
avant-garde poem. I have a blurred impression of his general tone, of his
tricks of rhythm, layout and typography (he relies heavily on those devices)
But at no point does there seem to be a moment of engagement, of anything at
'stake', of contingency behind the language. All poems are one poem and feed
into an almost daily performance throughout a multiplicity of cybersites.
And it has reached the point now where I hit delete when yet another one
appears: I have seen the show already, I don't want to watch endless
repeats.
Now of course I could utterly awry in my response.
But what perturbs me is whether there is something in the nature of the
medium of conveyance that summons of poetry of instant forgetfulness, a
verse that aspires to a condition akin to television.
david b
----- Original Message -----
From: "cris cheek" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 10:06 AM
Subject: Re: E poetry 2001- Hell it was good!
> Hi David,
>
> we do have to be careful in waving big brushes in respect of work going on
> right now. Firstly I venture that the majority of those trying to make use
> of these emerging technologies for creative practice are aware of their
> clunkinesses and are also frustrated by (energised by and challenged by)
at
> least some of the restraints in their train. There is already a wide range
> of poetic tendencies under investigation.
>
> Perhaps the most happy resurgence has been in the fields of concrete and
> sound poetries (to often painted as either abject or depoliticized when
> neither is the case) and the exceeding of Surrealist text-image
parameters.
> I too have blushed at the triumphal animation of a word, when little has
> apparently been achieved or challenged. But i do feel very powerful
> currents flowing through the practices of Alan Sonheim, mez, Talan
Memmott,
> Shelley Jackson, Christian Bok and John Cayley - just for a couple of
> fairly easily accessed examples. Of course the 'web' is not the only mesh
> of venues. There are also CDRoms in circulation and yes, 'live' events.
> Students at Dartington have been producing some extremely interesting work
> using new media for a couple of years now.
>
> One lot of poets / writers is working to become literal artists using
> programmable media. This can mean getting sprinkled with nerd dust and
> learning to get to grips with code - not everybody's cuppa, but
necessary
> business (as Al Fisher might have said). Another lot are making strategic
> alliances with techies and then making work in collaboration. We're still
> in early days. The work is beginning to flow. Give it a chance. Useful
> perspectives can be gained by having a go yourself! And no, that doesn't
> just mean putting one's poem that would work perfectly well on a page up
on
> a web page. A discursive balance needs to be struck between means of
> production and means of distribution. It's not a book, acknowledge the
> differences (not that you don't, David, this isn't aimed at you even
though
> it begins by being addressed to you, i'm talking to myself as well).
>
> love and love
> cris
>
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