In Bit, Out of Print

When I first read Stephanie Strickland's Zone Zero in 2008, I wrote a brief paper on it for my "Poetry and its Others" graduate poetry course. Stephanie actually visited our classroom and I remember reading a part of my paper aloud to her. Julie Carr said that the part I read sounded like it could be one of the blurbs for the book. I have been trying to find that paper desperately because I think I understood and appreciated the project better two years ago. The project never actually excited me all that much back then, but at least I felt like I had a way to talk about it. Now that I have seen/watched the digital version of Zone Zero countless times including a presentation by the author herself, I am somehow even less excited about it. V however, is much more exciting to me.

I had seen vniverse before this week, during the 2008 presentation by Strickland that I referenced above- but I don't remember her mentioning that there was a book portion to the project. As poetry, and that's what it is, I think the book is quite beautiful. There is some of the same cerebral poetry for cerebral poetry's sake that plagues Zone Zero, but in V it is nicely balanced with touching political and philosophical insight like "for all human beings, our vocation/ in the world is to restore the sense/ of a rightful self to those deprived of it. To all, (Strickland 21). Besides the title's unforeseeable association with V the TV series (for Visitors) or the drug derived from vampire blood in True Blood, I enjoyed this book. It begs the question, why is this book out of print and Zone Zero is not? Penguin is likely more worried about the bottom line than Ahsahta for starts, but I guess a possible (though unprecedented :) ) reason is that I'm wrong about this and Zone Zero is incredible. Someone convince me.

When I first saw the digital version of Slipping Glimpse I was confused. I remember that CD was making my crappy HP laptop hot and bothered, making mufflerless car sounds and then I realized that it was 2008 and this poem had to be online somewhere-and of course it was. So why Ahsahta and Stephanie, is there a CD in your book when this can be found online? That was my first and less interesting point of confusion that was easily answered with a simple, the internet changes response from one of my classmates at the time. Under my breath I said something about 8-tracks, VHS, Beta (omg remember Beta!?), cassetes and so on. All technology changes, a CD is technology and it changes, it has changed. My netbook has no CD-ROM, why would I need it with USB 2.0 and the internet?

Anyway, so this was the first digital poem I had encountered besides DeCampos' Hearthead
which is much different than Slipping Glimpse. The first thing I noticed about this poem was that it was not readable, at all. Then I found that you can scroll the text, but if you have to scroll the text to read it, why put it in there to begin with? Nothing about the poem was even aesthetically pleasing.

Then I got to The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot which won the Boston Review's poetry award in 1999. While discussing the print version in class, we were mostly silent (awkwardly so) while Strickland explained her reading of this poem. A love story between sand and soot built through associations and there were more details that I can't remember. Ok what? So here is a room full of people who read poetry (usually difficult poetry) for a living and we struggled to follow the connections she was making about this poem. We smelled a stretch. Maybe we missed the point but as I read it again, I'm still in that room awkwardly looking at Stephanie Strickland defending the poem. I thought that the digital portion of this would help but sighed when I saw it was hypertext. Which we all forgave for it being done in 1999, but still. For me it didn't add to the poem at all for me, but I do understand that over a decade ago it would maybe. Basically I felt like it was an opaque, sterile and impenetrable poem put into hypertext (sorry) and I still do.

But back to the good stuff. During that same presentation, Strickland showed Vniverse. I remember thinking, now this is more like it. Although it is a little antiquated feeling now, it is still a beautiful digital poem. I love the idea of navigation in the universe juxtaposed with navigating the universe that now exists digitally on the web. After reading the book, reading the words on the digital vniverse was quite pleasant and the writing didn't feel so lost and isolated as it often does in digital poems like Slipping Glimpse. Vniverse.com exists within the book and within the web, creating an interesting constellation itself which joins the digital with the material (for lack of a better word). For the most part I can close read the poems in V, and I can close read vniverse which is a relief after Zone Zero. Not to say that a poem is bad if it can't be close read-Fanny Howe's work usually defies close reading and I find it to be incredibly rich and emotionally accessible.

I guess this week's blog was kind of a reaction piece. I do think we should all write to Janet Holmes and tell her to call Penguin, get the rights to V and start printing that rather than Zone Zero. Or she can do both, but I see V as a much closer attempt to truly combine literature and new media. V is the two way bridge we need between the book and the screen and that bridge has been knocked down.