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Kent, I agree with David B. that the arts do not progress, but with you that there will be developments we cannot imagine in poetry[1]. But speculating about them is difficult precisely because we cannot imagine them. Still, I am intrigued by the idea of hyper-authorship, even while being doubtful that it would make much difference--there would still be some author-function & even if you couldn't identify that function with a person, you could certainly produce a digital photograph to put on the lobby wall. (There are now wholly digital "actresses" beginning to appear in movies.) I also agree with you that my original example of the poet who delves into domestic autobiography in search of authenticity is too simple-minded, though it might offer a place to begin. What is it about the details of one's own domestic arrangements that seem so compelling to the "self"? Your fishing poem w/ footnotes is a lovely undercutting of this simple autobiographical self, but it hardly embodies your utopian vision of the poem of the future. A lot of post-modern theory having to do with electronic & hyper- texts asserts that lone, isolated language is a part of the (passing) "print culture" & that we must become fluent in images. I don't find this convincing. Though ways of reading will certainly develop, i.e., change, there will continue to be (I bet) a linguistic art known as poetry. Now, your interest in multiple or multiplied selves _is_ interesting & in fact I have an assignment (more interesting than poor Josephine's sonnet) in which I assign groups of students to "create a poet" & write that poet's poems collectively. This "gets them out of themselves" & has produced some interesting work. My own work, increasingly, takes on subject matter as a way of dealing with the self--I try to situate the speaking "voice"[2] of the poem (something very specific) within some universe of discourse, say, fishing. Yet, like David & Alison, I am "stuck with (if not on) myself, thought that identity is certainly permeable & subject to revision. I am struck by the fact, though, that we all behave as human beings as if we were identifiable selves, however provisional & I am absolutely dedicated to poetry as a human art. (Which is not to say your are not, of course.) I also prefer friendship to enmity . . . yrs. jd == [1] As for the movies, I suppose that there have been technical improvements, but (speaking personally) I almost never go to new (American) films (which are the most technically "advanced") but I am often captivated by some old British b&w on tv late at night. [2] Each poem has a way of saying things that develops out of the particular language game(s) underlying the poem.