Digital Poetry

Digital Poetry Defined
Digital poetry is a challenge to conventional thinking and cannot be limited to a strict definition. The best way to define digital poetry is as genre of electronic literature that allows the reader/audience to experience poetry through a series of interactive or visual means by utilizing programming and social networks. Jason Nelson, a digital poet, further defines this media as a ''"… combination of technology and poetry, with writers using all multi-media elements as critical texts. Sounds, images, movement, video, interface/interactivity and words are combined to create new poetic forms and experiences." '' It can be further defined as “ an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content [consisting] largely of oral or literary works in which language is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose."

History of Digital Poetry
If digital poetry can be defined as such, then it should be no surprise that a genre born out of the desire to transcend the traditional nature of language has continued this pursuit, revolutionizing its own genre and the conventions that have defined it. In what is considered the preeminent book about the genre,  Prehistoric Digital Poetry : An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995 , ' C.T. Funkhouser suggests that as early as the 1950s, poets began experimenting with presenting their work through digital mediums, such as early, rudimentary computer programs. Since digital poetry was initially launched by poets who experimented with computers in the late 1950s, it is safe to notice that digital poetry became increasingly popular with the rise of programming. For example, computer programs that wrote sonnets, haiku, or other forms, like Margaret Masterman and Robin McKinnon Wood's "Computerized Japanese Haiku" (example ) have been cited as early as 1968. Though the options were originally limited to experimenters and programmers, digital poetry has evolved with the dynamic nature of modern technology. It has assumed many forms in various media, including hypermedia approachers that blend various media into a single, coherent piece of art. Digital poetry sought to incorporate a more interactive element, which encouraged audiences to engage and "experience" the literature, and served as a continuation of poetry's goal to refute Plato's notions about the limited use of the written word and demonstrate how aesthetic qualities and emotional poignancy can be achieved by poetic use of various media.

Faith (Aamir Akram)
Digital poems have developed simultaneously with the advent of programming. Early works of digital poetry go as far back as the 1960s where the first known digital poems were cited. Digital poetry often incorporates themes that are similar in nature to the poems that are in print and hence both require deep thought to understand their message. However there are many differences between a digital poem and the print poem. One of the differences is that in print poetry there is a continuity of writing and coding. In other words all one needs to do is write the poem for them to get their message across to their readers. However in digital poetry there is a division between writing and coding. Because of this, the poet usually collaborates with programmers, sound artists, and graphic designers to create a multimodal work. Another difference between the two is that in print poetry, since the reader receives the book as a completed product, the material processes that created it can appropriately be called ‘production. According to Hayles this term implies that its creation as an artifactual object has already taken place. Once the book is made, it exists as a (relatively) stable entity, but digital poetry on the other hand exists as a distributed phenomenon. Even when it is confined to a single machine, the text is still dispersed across different data files, programs, hardware functionalities, etc. Because of this Hayles argues that “it would be more accurate to call a digital text a process rather than an object.”  Finally the digital poem may not have a clearly defined order for its audiences to follow when they read it and hence it can be read and interpreted in various ways. This cannot be attributed to traditional poems because its writing is fixed in paper. Furthermore, pictures, word art, and sounds are often incorporated into the digital poem as well giving its readers a more intricate experience as shown by the following example.

 Faith  by Robert Kendall is a work of digital poetry that looks to contrast logic with faith. In this poem the author struggles over how his rational thought is preventing him from having a certain faith. The details of the “Faith” are unknown since there is no mention of a religion or a particular event the author seems to have faith in. However, after pondering for some time and being in relative despair over these contrasting themes, the author decides that Faith is all about ignoring rationality to make the jump in to the realm of the unknown (leap of Faith). The overall theme of the poem seems to be about how the man plays with rationality, theory, and unknown constantly in his life. The poem itself was very interactive with sounds that seem to be designed for some kind of ballet or opera. The sounds made me more involved in the poem because it made me think more deeply about the verses that appeared in front of me. There was an option to read the poem without the sound and as I tried that, I realized how much different and vacant the poem felt. The sounds also helped me accurately follow the tone of the poem since sound changed appropriately according to the text that appeared. In the beginning the sound seemed to be that of curiosity and inquisitiveness. Then the sound became that of hopeless despair. And then finally the sound resembled an optimistic tone when the author decided to ignore rationality and make the Leap of Faith to Faith. The words appeared all over the screen in different colors for each verse or stanza and in the end there was an amalgam of colors where certain words were in certain colors constantly. There seemed to be a correlation between the type of words that came and their colors. Words associated with faith seemed to be in lighter color than words associated with logic. The transition from one verse or stanza to the other involved appropriate movement and addition of words until we came to the last stanza where all the words except “Faith” on top of the screen collapsed and “Faith” came and landed on top of them signifying how the author discarded logic for faith. Even in the beginning “logic” tries to disturb “Faith” but is unsuccessful in doing so and is simply discarded by “Faith.”

Though this digital poem was created in 2002, it is likely to attract current audiences who are more technologically gifted than the audiences then. Even though digital poems themselves are not popular among the common reading audience, the current generation will be able to understand this poem better because of its interactive feature which almost makes it seem more like an enigma than a poem. This method of electronic literature should be utilized more by poets because it involves collaboration between various disciplines which means more feedback is available for the delivery of the poem itself and since people spend more time on the computer than with a book, this method of poem writing might cause more people to read poems than before.



the dreamlife of letters (Kendra Bozick)
"the dreamlife of letters" by Brian Kim Stefans is a flash poem response to the poet and feminist literary theorist Rachel Blau DuPlessis created in 1999 during a online literary roundtable on sexuality and literature. Stefans remarked that his goal in approaching his response to DuPlessis’ poem was to go beyond “normal prose” and create new poems based on how words can interact and how, when used inappropriately, can loose their meaning all together. “As words almost invariably take on nearly obscene meanings when they are left to linger on their own…”



To illustrate the obscenity of words, Stefans wrote a series of short poems ("The Dreamlife of Letters" ) that arranged the words of DuPlessis’ poem according to their first letter. After writing his initial poems, he felt that they clung too closely to traditional “concrete” poetics. In order to break away from these constraints, he animated the poems into the final flash poem.

“Influenced by the traditions of concrete poetry and ambient poetics, the piece foregrounds language not only as a medium of meaning, but also as a medium of design”



“the dreamlife of letters” is a classic example of digital poetry because it makes words into an experience. It breaks away from traditional poetry in both form, how the words are arranged and displayed, and function, how the words interact. Stefans challenges form clearly by how the words are displayed on the flash piece by a form of digital typography. The words move, chase, intertwine and relate to other words within each segment. They vary in size, shape, and action which keeps the viewer tuned into what is occurring on the screen. But unlike typical digital typography (as seen in the YouTube clip), there is no pattern, scheme, or any semblance of order. He makes this explicitly clear in how he changes the capitalization of his title in his concrete poems and flash poem. In the traditional poem set he keeps to classical capitalization, "The Dreamlife of Letters", but forgoes this in the digital variation. "the dreamlike of letters". These variances also translate to how the words interact/their function. Just as they are displayed randomly, they are chosen at random. They do not form sentences or thoughts or evoke emotion but solely appear at random.



As entertaining as it to watch, there seems to be a bigger picture underlying these spinning words. The random nature of this digital poem uncovers another level of depth to Stefans' critique. Stefans’ goal was to show the absurdity of words when they are “left to linger on their own” without construction. He makes this idea visual. The animation anthropomorphizes words by giving them “life” and pokes fun again at how words react chaotically when left to their devices. Through this he is demonstrating a need for context, meaning and thoughtful use of words in DuPlessis’ poem and in literature as a whole. He focuses on words specifically, which is important to note. He does not incorporate music or images but only a barrage of words moving about in black and white lettering on solid orange background. This simplicity causes the viewer to not be distracted or the screen to be too busy and focus on the words.

This is How You Will Die (dela Cruz)
This is How You Will Die by Jason Nelson is an electronic piece of literature that explores the gambles of life and death. It is a slot machine simulator that forces the reader to interact with it to create different death scenarios. The slot machine has five columns, each with twelve sentence fragments, that can create up to 792 unique death sequences. The user first starts with enough "demise credits" for three different deaths. He can 'win' a bonus that gives him more credits and more time. Once the credits deplete to a number under 10, he 'loses', and the scenario shown is "how you will die."

Since This is How You Will Die is completely interactive, the only way to experience it is for the user to find out his own death. As he clicks through several times, the user will come to find that there are many different combinations - all of which are unpleasant. Though they are not necessarily morbid, the user can see failure in his life before death, experience a painful (and sometimes slow) death, or even face more misfortunes post-mortem. As the user continues to use his 'demise credits', which are representative of how many breaths he has left, he comes closer and closer to his death. However, if the user creates an interesting death sequence, he may receive a bonus that extends his lifetime. This bonus has two sides, a good and a bad side, symbolizing the balance of life and death.

The eerie nature of the poem extends with the usage of background music and the nine "death videos" that randomly show up to accompany a scenario. The background music sets a dark tone to the game, and continouosly repeats as the user goes on. It rarely changes, but when it does, it is usually interrupted by a lone singer who is singing about death. The sudden change of the background can create a much creepier tone than before. Additionally, the videos can be interpreted several ways. Most of the videos are recorded with a single character, all who have a pessimistic tone regarding death. The speech is repetitive and has a sense of uncertainty towards the inevitable ending of life. The listener could argue that the videos could be compared to an interrogation, with snippets of questions, answers, and (what seems to be) a trauma victim.

Jason Nelson applies several aspects of electronic literature into This is How You Will Die. First, the instructions of the 'game' is simply an open-ended poem that explains the gamble of life (and death). Likewise, the sentence fragments in each of the 5 sets are written in a way that can overlap and intertwine with each other, creating unique death sequences. This is the most obvious and direct form of literature seen in the piece. This is How You Will Die also parallels the book series Choose Your Own Adventure which also revolve around the reader's choices or interaction to lead to several different endings. Next, the background music that is played provokes emotions from the user, similar to a story's settings. Though it is abstract, the development of a setting and mood creates a link from the author to the user - in this case, music. Finally, the death videos the plays a set of pictures, quotes, and a recording on repeat. The videos uses many sources, but inevitably tells miniature stories within the piece. Though there is much more in this piece of literature than in traditional literature, This is How You Will Die is still open-ended and still allows the user to think, imagine, and experience the piece. The piece is entirely "digitally born". By piecing the remediations together, Jason Nelson communicates certain perceptions of death.

Expressive Drive: How "Cruising" Exemplifies the Potential of Digital Poetry (Giroux)
One of the foremost digital poetry experts is Christopher Funkhouser, and even he acknowledges that the genre has a rather ambiguous and ever-evolving definition. Rather than be bogged down by the different functional definitions of the genre, Funkhouser pursues other research and looks for common elements that arise in the definitions reached by these fellow experts. He notes that digital poetry has been defined in one study as “creative, experimental, playful and also critical language art involving programming, multimedia, animation, interactivity, and net communication," while another study found its defining qualities to be "installations of interactive media art," with some reliance on "computer- and net-based art," and whose language origins are derived "explicitly from literary traditions.” These definitions vary marginally, but they serve to outline a few criteria that have been accepted as fundamental components of all digital poetry. First, that the art form attempts, to some degree, to use literary language to the same end as traditional poetry, which is to say that “language is used for its aesthetic qualities” rather than its explanatory form, in an attempt to generate “language [that] is used in a manner that is felt by its user and audience to differ from ordinary prose.” Second, that the art be a “conglomeration [of] literary, visual and sonic art,” and that the combining of these forms be “mechanically enabled by digital hardware and software.” Third, that some level of interactivity exists, which offers to the reader a level of access to the poem that could not accompany the mere reading of a conventional poem. Analysis of how Ingrid Ankerson and Megan Sapnar’s poem "Cruising" satisfies each of these criteria is useful in understanding how the techniques of digital poetry are utilized in a concerted effort to advance the thematic interests of the poet(s).

The diction is indeed dense, literary language, as the poem tells the story of three teenage girls who are driving up and down the main street in a small Wisconsin town, looking for excitement, something to do, or someone to love. It is a scene that could have easily been depicted in prose or on a movie screen, and yet the authors adhere to poetry’s conventional “condensed or compressed form to convey emotion or ideas to the reader's or listener's mind or ear.” Language like “The heat pumping full-blast” and “sniffing the street like a dog,” suggests a sensual, animalistic tone, indicative of deep urges in search of an outlet. This primal tone is juxtaposed against the simultaneous existence of more measured emotions expressed by passages like “we were all looking for love” and to “really get to know each other,” furthering the notion of a conflict of emotion, at once seeking fulfillment of both basic desires as well as complex emotions. Can both really be satisfied at once, or will the pursuit of the other inherently destroy the other? Further evidence to this conflict is found as the poem ends with the girls “Eyeing life through a car we couldn’t yet take to the world.” The girls are aware that there is more to the world than their small Wisconsin town and despite apparently having the means to access this world, in the form of a car, they are resigned to cruising up and down familiar streets. This use of poetic language not only displays the aesthetic and affective qualities that the working definition of digital poetry requires, but it also establishes a clear thematic concern with how digital poetry can serve as a unique outlet for the emotions that arise from the conflicts depicted above.

<span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', 'serif'; font-size: 12pt">Digital poetry requires a blending of visual, literary and sonic art facilitated by the use of computers or web-based programming and cruising certainly satisfies all of these elements. The presentation consists of a simultaneous oral recitation of a poem, with the words of the poem moving across the screen, as well as the presence of background music and a filmstrip presentation of images that correlate closely with the language of the poem. This approach gives the presentation a fast-paced, almost cluttered appearance, which serves as a multimedia portrayal of the clouded, racing thoughts playing out in the conflicted minds of the girls. If poetry is meant “felt” by the reader, as opposed the explanatory nature of prose, then Ankerson and Sapnar utilize the multimedia nature of their digital poem in order to allow for a “feeling” of conflict and confusion that could not be approximated by mere written words.

<p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin: 0in 0in 10pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', 'serif'; font-size: 12pt">Another element of the poem that is facilitated by the poem’s digital nature is the fact that the audience has control over the manner in which the visual elements of the poem are displayed. Depending on where the cursor is positioned of the screen, the text may be displayed in large font or small font that moves either incredibly quickly or incredibly slowly and may move from right to left or from left to right (See photos). No matter how the cursor is positioned, one can never truly synchronize all elements of the poem, which is to say that logically aligning the narration, text and images is a frustratingly allusive task. Of course, this frustration parallels itself beautifully with the thematic concerns over the expression of conflicting emotions and feelings. Despite this allusiveness, the more time one spends figuring out how to manipulate the presentation, the more able they become to absorb the multimedia art form. The authors are effectively challenging their audience members to take the time to learn how to “drive” the poem, an implicit suggestion that striving for transcendent forms of communication, like digital poetry, may facilitate more effective communication of complex feelings and emotions than dependence on conventional media. Revisiting the last line of the poem in the context of this challenge furthers this notion. The authors suggest that humans possess the tools required to communicate at a more effective level but are confined by our dependence on conventional forms of communication, much like the girls view of the world is confined by their limited knowledge of the world outside their hometown.

<p style="text-indent: 0.5in; margin: 0in 0in 10pt"><span style="line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman', 'serif'; font-size: 12pt">“Cruising” is an extremely effective digital poem not merely because it embodies the defining qualities of digital poetry, but because these qualities all serve a well-defined roll in reinforcing the poem’s suggestions about how humans require more advanced forms of communications to effectively express the emotional and intellectual conflicts that we encounter.