I am usually a much better student, my apologies to everyone for the once again late blog. The truth is I got pretty stuck on Bernstein's essays and have had to read them so slowly and carefully that I lost valuable time there. I still don't completely understand what he wants, or what his central arguments really are and I continue to be frustrated by his introduction of abstract terms defined by abstract examples and definitions.
One quote that has stuck with me as it relates to digital poetics is, "Absorption and antiabsoption are both present in any method of reading or writing, although one or the other may be more obtrusive or evasive. They connote colorations more than dichotomies" (22). If I understand what he means by absorptive and antiabsorptive (and I have already told you that I don't) then it seems to me that digital poetics cheat heavily to the antiabsorptive side of both the reading and the writing of the genre. As I write this, I realize how easily it would be to discuss this in circles, as Bernstein argues that antiabsorption (or, impermeable as he switches to sometimes) can create absorptive texts and they connote colorations more than dichotomies but for the sake of my sanity I will attempt to explain why I see digital poetics as more "colored" by the antiabsorptive. The words Bernstein places into the absorption category (I thought they were not to connote dichotomies Bernstien!) are words that I would associate with a pleasurable reading experience. One that sucks its reader in, like a Rosemarie Waldrop poem. Of course impermeable elements serve absorptive works insofar that they provide interesting contrast to the piece, a way to break the monotony of absorption, or simply to create drama.
Right now, digital poetics are not in general, a Rosemarie Waldrop poem. They usually do not suck their reader in, and seem in fact to be purposefully and meaningfully impermeable. The words listed under the impermeability category seem to match up much more closely with my reading experience of digital poetics than the absorption category. Yesterday after discussing digital poetics and Bernstein with Julie Carr during a car ride back to Denver, I realized I had an uncomfortable question that maybe we have all been asking, but in a round about way. When did pleasure in art stop mattering? After experiencing (I wouldn't call it reading really and I don't mean that in a bad way) the work for today, I found myself more interested in the curatorial statements than in the pieces themselves- like the poems are borrowing Kenny Goldsmith's thinkerships. Not to say conceptual art is not pleasurable, I think Goldsmith's work gives me an absurd kind of pleasure to think about. What I want (I know I am beating a dead horse here) is not an abolition of conceptual digital poetics but rather a response to it that provides a digital poetic that is pleasurable to experience, not just to intellectualize or ponder. I think that Mez's work is a step in that direction in that it is rooted in language whether it be computer code or human code (social language), the meat of the work (from what I have seen) is still experienced and absorbed by the reader.
Even though interactive works like Joerg Piringer's sound poetry, or any hypertext poetics would lead one to believe that they are inherently absorbing the reader/navigator into them, it is so often a false absorption that invites the reader in, only to remind them of how powerless they are. This is interesting stuff, but it's getting tired. Young as it it, the genre is begging for a revolution that stops intentionally frustrating the "reader". You win, impermeable digital poetry, we're frustrated, now what else can you make us feel?
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I like this idea of false absorption (I can't figure out whether I'm spelling that word correctly)--especially with regards to purpose and what it ultimately accomplishes.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I simply won't bring anything to the work if there isn't something attractive about it. I just shut down and click through rather than linger. But perhaps that's built-in to the aesthetics of digital poetry? Since it seems to have crafted an identity of being an extension of the most extreme forms of experimentation or beyond that, something completely new. Maybe another question to raise is something like the one David did in his blog: what if we made digital poetry something other than it is, whether that be stationary or pleasurable or whatever? Can we? What would it look like?
...I don't have the answers.
Wasn't modernism the point where the illusion of realism came to a halt, and with it the necessity of "prettiness" in art? I agree with you that a lot of digital poems harp on its own impermeability and it is getting annoying. It reminds me a lot of rappers who rap about being better rappers that other rappers. This takes up a good third of all rap songs ever. Just like poetry doesn't have to be about the writing of itself, although it is always aware of that fact, digital poetics could be about something else.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little unclear on what you mean by false absorption...maybe this is something to discuss in class.
ReplyDeleteI agree, though, that the nature of the absorptive/antiabsorptive is slippery. Regarding Maria Mencia’s “Birds Singing Other Birds’ Songs” I clicked around for awhile and immersed myself in the aesthetics of the visual and auditory presentation. But in the back of my mind I realized I was forcing it. It was pretty, but it's not the same aesthetic experience of reading, for example, Federico Garcia Lorca. At the risk of sounding like a cornball, I *feel* Lorca without trying, if that makes sense.
But, at the same time, Bernstein points out that the absorptive/antiabsortive are not mutually exclusive categories. Ah well...I have no answers either. --Lacy
I am interested in digital poetry because I strongly believe it has potential to make its reader feel more than "ok cool", and feel more like a reader in general. I can't think of any reason why there has to only be one type of digital poetics.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe pretty wasn't the right word. Modernism is/was awesome for the reasons Todd mentions, and there are modernist writers whose work I take pleasure in actually reading, not just thinking about. So maybe "experiential pleasure that transcends simply the conceptual" is the word I was looking for. What is great about modernists like Kafka, HD, Eliot, some Joyce, Jean Rhys, etc is that the absorption and impermeability (that I still don't understand or know how to spell either Kelly) seem to be well balanced. Not only do these writers make us think, they make us enjoy thinking about their work and linger there with them. Like Kelly said, the linger factor is lacking in DP. I think it's easy to have an idea (Stephen and Leopold walk through Dublin), the hard part, the real art, is how you're going to represent that idea.
PS>Todd,good rapper reference by the way, it's perfect. It's like the obsession with ars poetica in contemporary (page and digital) poetry. You should join the facebook group, "who is shauwty and why does she have so many rapper boyfriends." Seriously, it's a real group.
I'm not going to be in class today so I thought I should try to answer Lacy if I can. Umm, false absorption? Besides it having a good ring to it, I think I meant that the interactivity that accompanies pieces like Mary Flanagan's "The House", seems at first to be absorptive (since it include the reader in a real seeming way) but in the end the interactivity is really another impermeability. Again I say this making no claims to fully understanding the terms to begin with....
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