E-Poetry Exposed

     Traditional poems were known to be written by hand presented in black and white. Now there has been an expanse of how and where to write poetry. Electronic poetry brings a new meaning to reading between the lines. I didn’t realize that certain poems were created just for the electronic world. The authors of each poem have taken unique paths in demonstrating what is capable of electronic poetry. Some say that it’s difficult to define what e-poetry is due to the fact that people continue to add their own ideas and interpretations each day. Talan Memmott wrote a paper discussing digital poetry and the problems of reading it. The thesis he came up with was that it is difficult to define and classify electronic poetry. He said, “Its only feasible definition is a minimal one: that the object in question be ‘digital,’ mediated through digital technology, and that it be called ‘poetry’ by its author or by a critical reader” (Memmott, 293). It’s hard to classify something as it changes. The best thing e-poetry provides for a person leaves the potential for thinking. Everything is no longer black and white but presented in a vast array of colors, movements, sounds, etc. Reading different e-poems by different authors made me think a lot about what I saw electronic poetry to be.

     Instead of sticking with tradition and on a straight path, others have strayed towards the woods to adventure and explore other possibilities. One of the first poems we explored was called “The Best Cigarette” by Billy Collins. Reading the poem on a piece of paper felt like all the analysis was left up to me as the reader. A lot of times the poetry on a white paper feels so boring yet complex. You want to understand what the stanzas are entailing and why certain phrases are used but it gets harder to grasp. Looking at the poem online made the interpretation not only enjoyable but easier to comprehend. Instead of me just reading the words to myself, the e-poem was read by the author. Billy Collins read the entire poem and as he reads it the images smoothly transition as the words change. The poem begins by typing out the first line, “There are many that I miss” then to follow are street lines. These street lines illustrate the following line, which reads “having sent my last one out a car window.” But as Collins’ continues to read his poem the imagine transitions into a trail of smoke. By seeing the smoke trail it helps to comprehend and envision what the poet meant by his words. Not only do I get to picture the idea of a car driving down the road but the smoke let’s me think about a cigarette being thrown out the window and still has a trail of smoke from not being completely finished. “Sparkling along the road one night, years ago” is the third line spoken while the trail of smoke is still visible on the screen. It makes it so much easier to enjoy the poem with the illustrations.

     “The Best Cigarette” wasn’t the most difficult poem to read without the images but it added something to the poem that almost lets the reader inside the speaker’s mind. But illustrations and being read the text are not the only elements that make up the poem. At first glance it wasn’t obvious to me what to observe as an element but the poem doesn’t contain colors; the entire presentation is in black and white. The individual who created the electronic version of the poem could have exhibited different colors to illustrate the glow of the cigarette burning or the yellow of “the sun bright in the windows.” Instead he kept everything with the white, grey, and black tones. I think this element adds more to the poem and that if there were in colors; that would have just taken away from the vision of the cigarette. There’s also the accent of the smoke within every image. Cigarettes have constant flows of smoke, especially when the smoker consumes the nicotine. Constantly providing smoke illustrations keeps a consistency of the cigarette and how it can affect so much around the speaker and lifestyles. But these aren’t the only ways for someone to demonstrate their use of electronic poetry.

     On my own I examined an electronic poem that wasn’t discussed in class. I searched on http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/index.htm and found a poem called “Intersecting” by Joanna Sakellion. There are various ways to navigate through the poem. It’s not presented like “The Best Cigarette” where it’s in a specific order. The reader starts with a picture of a key hole and when you move your mouse over it a key appears over the hole. By clicking the key, the reader enters the poem and the three different views possible. There are three silhouette images that the reader can choose to click on and begin the poem. Depending on which image is clicked on will determine where the poem begins. As you continue to click on the pictures, the lines of text will change but interlocks between the people the poem is about. The title reflects the meaning of the poem. The three individuals that the poet writes about have intersecting ideas. No matter which image you choose to start with, the lines that will appear are the same just in different patterns or order. Each person has their own story but with similar thoughts going through their minds.

     The shattering champagne glass in between the three faces signifies the connection between the individuals. Sakellion used this idea as the starting point and from each click of the reader’s mouse begins the cycle of each story. The three individual’s stories share the bond between them as well because it seems like there was a conflict intruding that caused pain among them. The wording is never clear and continues moving giving the impressing that things are unresolved between the three people and they are all confused. I think that having the words constantly moving demonstrates how these characters are broken and don’t know where to go with what occurred. The broken champagne glass can also be a representation of where the story of destruction all began but also how the people are feeling; broken apart. This poem is similar to “The Best Cigarette,” not in the way it was constructed but by the incorporation of imagery with the text. But even with this similarity, the authors expressed electronic poetry in different manners. I think by comparing these two poems shows how interpretations between poets are not consistent. But even with this similarity, the authors expressed electronic poetry in different manners. I think by comparing these two poems shows how interpretations between poets are not consistent. When poets write their work on a sheet of paper it is a consistency, maybe not in stanza forms but there are certain features that will link them.  

     I got to experience creating an electronic poem of my own. I wanted to take advantage of really understanding all the work it takes to creating one. And believe me, it’s a lot of work and effort. I wanted to write my own poem, I enjoy trying to find an idea and working through it. Writing the poem was a special process all on its own but definitely worth it. Right from the start I had the idea of dealing with snow. I was hoping to create some kind of animation that looked like snow in the final product but soon enough I decided to change my mind. After a couple drafts of edits I finished with writing about the blanket of snow that covers the ground without ever calling it snow; I wanted to reader to be able to interpret what the “White Blanket” was describing.

     Once placing all the stanzas onto the white slides I wanted there to be some accented colors to certain words like in the phrase “Like the reds and greens that sparkle in the night.” I thought by accenting the words ‘red,’ ‘green’ and ‘night’ it would pull the reader more to the idea of the Christmas colors by making it seem like they glow. Other slides had a few words that I wanted to create attention to like ‘color.’ I didn’t want the reader to just think of any colors so I made the tones red, brown, orange, and yellow to represent the colors of fall being covered by the fall of snow. I was somewhat inspired by the other electronic poems’ uses of animation with the words. In one of our first examples called “Faith” by Robert Kendall, the author created separate animations for different words he was accenting or wanting the reader to pay attention too. I thought this would work well especially when I wanted words like ‘hotter’ to be noticeable. The line read, “Sun rises hotter with each new morn.” So to actually get the idea of being hotter, I colored the word with red, yellow, and orange then I animated the word separately by having it grow larger than the others.

     All together, I put a lot of different animations for when each stanza arrives on the page and different colors to at least a word per page. It grew more and more difficult with each idea that passed through my mind. I started out with one text box with all four lines per PowerPoint slide just to separate them all to give each line a separate time and animation. It’s obvious that electronic poets take a lot of time and energy to construct these visual poems for readers. It is hard to come up with a concept and write it on a page but then adding more symbolic ideas would add to frustration I think. I believe what Memmott was saying that it’s hard to come up with a solid definition of what electronic poetry is. Everyone is open to their own interpretation with the possibility of adding their own twist. E-poetry is constantly changing and quite possibly will become the more norm way of creating a poem.

WORKS CITED:

Collins, Billy. “The Best Cigarette.” http://www.bcactionpoet.org/the%20best%20cigarette.html

Kendall, Robert. “Faith.” http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/kendall__faith.html

Memmot, Talon.  New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories.  Cambridge, Mass, 293.

Sakellion, Joanna. “Intersecting Lives.” http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/fall2002/intersectinglives/index.htm