> Please expand on what you mean by poemy poems - the term is quite
lovely, in fact I think I've used it myself in the past.
> My idea of a poemy poem is one that is full of the kinds of phrasing,
tones and vocabulary that are expected by a reader fed on a diet of
similar stuff - a mix of elegiac mood and realistic detail on a
familiar experience, usually with a wise little twist at the end to
'startle' the reader with the poet's 'unique' insight (usually of
course it's not an insight at all, just a particular ordering of the
words to make it look that way - a language accident pretending to be
original thought, etc.)
> Now maybe your idea of a poemy poem is simply one that isn't in your
list below, one that looks like any other poem until you read it.
Presumably it would look much the same after you read it, Tim. It would
still look like a poemy poem.
> I'm saying this because over the past 10 years I've encountered an
increasing prejudice against poems that look like ordinary poems from
people who think that just because something is visual, sound,
interactive, conceptual or whatever then it's the dog's bollocks -
I read poemy poems in print. Quite a bit. I rarely read them on a computer
screen. Sometimes, though. I have a great interest, however, in computer
art, and in what one can do with/on a computer screen. I'm just not all that
interested in reading poemy poems on a computer screen. To me, poemy poems
on a computer screen are a little like films of books. That's probably
partly because much of my life's work has been toward trying to create
interactive poetry for computer screens. But, also, work that utilizes the
particular properties of the media/um it inhabits might talk to us in ways
that work that's dead to its media/um can't. A poemy poem might be alive to
its nature as a written thing or facsimile of voice but dead to its
existence and environment on the net, dead to its visuality, dead to its own
behavior and lack of interactive behavior, dead to its position as one among
billions of poemy poems in an age of disposable discourse.
> which of course is bollocks proper. It has been the excuse for masses
of trivial crap passed off as innovation etc - often it is the poorest
of 'poemy poems' given a bit of a makeover on the computer or placed
within some pointless interactive project.
what can i say? art attracts pretenders. great pretenders. and not so great.
many people don't have much experience with good interactive art; their
expectations are low and muddled. and most people who try to make
interactive poems don't have a sense of the possibilities of interactivity
beyond glorified page turning or magnet poetry. like other forms of art,
there are a few people serious about making such work as is required to do
something worthwhile.
ja
http://vispo.com
|