[Daniel Pereira]

Hey G.M.,

Well, one thing is I think you've picked an awful tough crowd here. A gang of unrepentant formalists are unlikely to give l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e its due.

Back in undergrad, I had the pleasure of working closely with Michael Joyce, who is generally considered one of the "fathers" of hypertext fiction (and a wonderful man, to boot), so I got a firsthand account, and some experience, with how much resistance work like what you're discussing can get.

But I think the real problem here is that examples you've chosen are so facile that they really don't do justice to the distinction you've made. "B" and "r-p-o-p-etc." are crappy. Why not John Hollander's "Swan and Shadow" if you really want to go in that direction? (Though I think "concrete poetry" already does a pretty good job of describing those poems).

Again, in my undergrad days I messed around with making hypertext poetry and a variety of other out-there ideas. I think some of my results were pretty positive -- startling, and perhaps even good. I'd love to show them to you, only they were made in programs that are no longer used in an operating system that's obsolete...which is undoubtedly the biggest issue. Until it's not prohibitively expensive and obnoxious to make and distribute these things, they're never going to have the chance of really becoming an "art." Ditto video games, which should have started getting interesting a long time ago, only nobody with the artistic chops to really do something creative has the skills necessary to make the actual video game.

It'll happen though.

Regards,
-Dan

[G. M. Palmer]

Daniel and Marcia --

I'm not trying to give l=... poetry its due. I'm more trying to argue that we should stop calling it poetry. I sent a fairly large amount of links to the mag and they picked and chose. I think that most of the work on UBUweb (ubu.com) would be considered propago.

Now, I do think that work of that type (and what you describe) has some valuable qualities as a form of literature, I just don't think that it should be included as a form (or forms or branch or whatever) of poetry.

The way that it pervades Academia should be obvious to anyone whose taken a college course in poetry writing. Often people in these classes assume that anything creative is a "poem." This attitude is supported by many professors and critics -- like Derek Beauliu (http://www.ubu.com/papers/beaulieu_c...commentary.pdf).

My paper is designed to say "yes, that's interesting -- but don't call it poetry, as few to none of the ways of discussing poetry apply to your work."

Michael

[Maryann Corbett]

Michael, I confess that I haven't combed through your article with care, but I'm not sure I would have gleaned from it the argument that these "third forms" should not be called poetry.

Now that I understand that goal, I'm looking at your statement that "associations between text and image are a third form of literature..." As stated, that would capture such things as illuminated manuscripts and really skillful modern calligraphy, designed to turn the text into art. Your villanelle page seemed to me more closely associated with those than with the bee/buzz design you mention above.
And the bee/buzz design reminded me of a lot of advertising design, also a means of associating text and visual art.

Now I don't recall that anybody has called those forms poetry. Maybe these definitions need tweaking?

Maryann

[Janet Kenny]

Once a little boy, son of friends, was jumping in an eccentric way.

Janet the stupid in a special grownup voice:
Are you dancing Ben?

Little boy:
No. I'm doing this.

[G. M. Palmer]

From now on my posting of new topics on Eratosphere will be confined to TDE.
Mea culpa, canis.
Michael

[Janet Kenny]

Michael,
I think this would have been received more sympathetically in General Talk. Mastery is very special and I guess none of us felt that any mastery was involved in the topic. Experiment at best.
Why not ask for the thread to be transferred to General Talk?
Janet

[Marilyn Taylor]

I've just re-surfaced here (after a week from hell-- last week of classes, looming deadlines, all that)-- and I apologize for my silence. My instant reaction to this thread is that Janet is probably right, M.O.M. is not going to be your most rewarding forum for a topic like this one, Michael-- and perhaps it should be moved to General Talk. As a newbie here, I am not sure if doing this is a dramatic gesture or not-- I certainly don't intend it to be such. It just seems like a more appropriate venue.

My own personal and admittedly instinctive (rather than scholarly) take on these matters under discussion is that (a) "Language Poetry" is not poetry (okay, I'm ducking under the table!); (b) its influence on the academy is beginning to dwindle, and (c) a composition like Buzzing Bee is representative of a little sub-genre that I've always seen referred to as "concrete poetry." Hollander has a fantastic collection of these, called *Types of Shape* (Athenium, 1979) which you probably already know about. If not, I highly recommend it.

But all this is not getting this thread moved to where it belongs, right? I will try to do that tonight. If smoke starts billowing out the sides of your computer, it's because I did it wrong.

Marilyn