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Electronic text is resistant; it does not simply
present the reader with itself. It is all surfaces, indicating that there has got to be
more in the depths. The reader has to explore the text; it is not just revealed to her.
It is possible that these kinetic poetries have bodies, as opposed to an evocation of body. They have ornamentation and a space they occupy. They have movement and change and a message. The versatile meanings of the word "body" include a mass of matter distinct from other masses and something that embodies or gives concrete reality to a thing. The possibility that works of kinetic poetry embody an idea means that they give shape to that idea, make clear its form, make it tangible. Kinetic poetries realize / virtualize ideas. As Taylor points out, the "transfiguration of the material and immaterial infinetly extends processes through which reality is virtualized and virtuality is realized." (Taylor, Mark C.. Hiding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 324) And "[t]he more one probes virtual organisms, the more obscure the line between organism and mechanism, natural and artificial, body and mind, and material and immaterial becomes." (Taylor, Mark C.. Hiding. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997, p. 309) In this manner, the qualifications of what it means to have a body becomes less relevant. It is the process, not the material, that is important, that overturns the distinctions of what "alive" is. |
© 2000 Shari Margolin