Unlearn Me

I was all set to write a blog that discussed the first rule to remix: start with rich source material, end with a rich resulting project. Funkhouser however, was good enough to address my concerns at the end of a fifty page discussion that focuses on randomly generated syntax and all but ignores the presence of human generated diction. Thankfully he acknowledges this problem of "randomly" generated textual quality that seems obvious when comparing poems composed with Kafka's language and poems whose words were created by combining random syllables.

Obviously the Kafka poems are much better if approached from a purely literary standpoint, which Funkhouser would advise me not to do. I found myself asking, then how am I supposed to approach the work if not from the standpoint of a poet? Of course this confusion explains our circular debate in class over linearity and nonlinearity, and our fruitless though desperate attempts to ground analyses of digital writing theory in metaphors related to already existing art forms. Here is another analogy that is very Boulder-esque. When I was a snowboard instructor (yes I was) it was much more difficult to teach students who had been teaching themselves for a few days than students who had zero experience with the sport to begin with. With the the three day students, we embarked down a pedagogical road of unlearning and unteaching that proved over and over again to be more frustrating than learning and teaching. The same could be said about teaching literature but especially poetry to undergrads here at the University of Colorado. In the paraphrased words of my own teacher, Noah Eli Gordon "they have been taught that poetry is a secret code in which we the teachers have the decoder ring." I spend an immense amount of time teaching students to approach language as a material used to constuct an artform that can be "solved" but should also be experienced, the way a painting or a roller coaster (Joshua Clover's favorite comparison) is experienced. Anyway, I think the analogy is clear: I believe studying digital poetics would be easier if a) one had little or no experience in reading poetry/literature or b) as we talked about last week, poetics when it comes after digital needs to be redefined and thought of, as Funkhouser seems to believe, as something completely other than poetry. So the question I am left with at the close of Funkhouser's chapter 1 is, and excuse the Carrie Bradshaw ending but, how do we unlearn?

Holy Epigraphs

Loss Pequeno Glazier not only shamelessly quotes himself in his book Digital Poetics, but preceding each chapter he includes up to four epigraphs! Sometimes, they even appear mid-section of text. My first and only thought on the matter was that he had to pad the book with the epigraphs for the same reason he had to pad it with the history of the internet, and two pages charting (literally) who was mentioned more as a master hypertextist. There was (and is) just not an abundance of material to work with when discussing digital poetics. The experience of reading this book was frustrating in part because rather than Glazier facing this head on from the beginning (he does tackle it at the end), he padded his book with epigraphs and seemingly irrelevant material. In his defense, some frustration originates from this book being a decade old (Lycos!?, wallpaper!?), which is a long time in digital time.

My frustrations aside, I found parts to be interesting, useful and surprisingly helpful to understanding some new digital poetics I encountered this week via several fantastic digital writing submissions for SpringGun (so exciting!). The overwhelmingly prevailing trend in digital poetics to favor form over content has often left me wanting more from this genre of writing; however, with Glazier's help I am beginning to see why 'poetics' is misleading and why this trend is necessary (for now). He writes, "...e-poetries, which show characteristics of Futurism's concern with the machine, the procedures of Oulipo, the multi-media events of Fluxus, and the material innovations of contemporary meta-semantic innovative poetries, substantively demonstrate that we are well past wondering when an electronic poetry will appear: e-poetry has arrived. Indeed, e-poetry affirms that it is the poet who is at the front lines of writing in the electronic medium" (Glazier 126). While reading this book and simultaneously experiencing work like Mez Breeze's ":TERROR(AW)ED PATCHES", a video screen shot of real time google wave collaborative writing, I finally accepted that the material of digital poetics is the writing. Although in Breeze's piece the actual displayed language of this work is both rich and beautful, the material, the coding, software, keyboard, internet, digital video etc. is the writing. Jerome McGann wrote, "Poetical texts operate to display their own practices." This idea is essential not only to understanding the showcasing of materials that favor form but also to understand the self referential, self conscious language that often accompanies digital poetics.

What I have wanted from digital poetics is an art form that matches its title: one part digital, one part poetics. In other words I always wanted a beautiful poem made more fascinating by code or another digital element, instead of the other way around. Honestly, I still want that but I do believe that by beginning to understand the theories behind a digital poetic, I am able to appreciate the genre as something that is not two parts (poetic and digital) but as more complicated and conceptual than that (digetic?). Yet by rooting digital poetics so deep into its material, it often moves it into the realm of strictly conceptual; and although I am interested in conceptual art, I am also excited to see how electronic literature can (like other conceptual poetic movements have) remain rooted in its form and materials while beginning to move away from the conceptual and toward the experiential.