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.