|
|
 |
An often asked question among poets is, What is the
poet's responsibility to the world? This question is especially important in times of new
forms of poetry because it is often used as a justification for the new form. As our world
becomes more immersed in technology, the technology of
poetry, or new media poetry, is put on the chopping block. Robert Pinsky, United States Poet Laureate (and print poet), answers this question by saying, "there is a dialectic between the poet and culture: the culture presents us with poetry, and with implicit definitions of what materials and means are poetic. The answer we must promise to give is 'no.' Real works revise the received idea of what poetry is; by mysterious cultural means the revisions are assimilated and then presented as the next definition to be resisted, violated and renewed. What poets must answer for is the unpoetic." (Pinsky, Robert. "Responsibilities of the Poet." Poetry and the World. New Jersey: The Ecco Press, 1988, p. 89.) Brian Lennon, author of Xenia, a web journal publishing articles addressing topics in the arts and digital media, as well as other work that utilizes the environments of web-based publishing, answers this question in a similar manner: "Now, as the new writing technology of the computer nears ubiquity in the developed West, the task of an electronic poetics will be to operate on, to alter, the computer's instrumental teleology-its design for informational transparency and functionality-as other poetics have resisted the transparencies of discourse and media in their times." (Lennon, Brian. "Screening a Digital Visual Poetics," Manuscript in proof, to appear in _Configurations_ vol. 8 no. 1, 2000, p. 16.) As Pinsky claims that the poet must transform (a people's idea of) what is "unpoetic" to "poetic" continually, Lennon feels that the poet must change the public's idea of what a computer's purpose / nature is. Pinksy answers this question in a general sense while Lennon focuses in on this time period and contemporary needs. Computers are heralded as information portals, but not so much regarded as literary gateways. Are computers considered "unpoetic"? Can poetry not convey information? Does poetry consist of a certain kind of information that is not seen as fitting with the technological times and computer culture? Lennon calls for an alteration of "the computer's instrumental teleology-its design for informational transparency and functionality" by an electronic poetics. He asks for an understanding that information is not so immediate and easily reached through computers. He wants electronic poetry to be a poetry that resists. And yet, poetry is unmistakeably a feedback loop. Poetry is a "feeling" art, often based on and drawing out emotions. Poetry is understood differently by each person that reads it and in relation to each different situation in which it is read. A reader puts into a poem her feelings about or reactions to it and each time she reads it again, she takes those feelings and reactions into consideration, recombining them with new feelings and reactions and past experiences that may relate to (the reading of) the poem. |
