Love the Life you Live: E-Poetry

Walking into the classroom, the first day of class, I was in great confusion to see what this class was really going to be about. Once we got handed a little pamphlet, i thought to myself “oh great, reading poems the whole semester” knowing that poetry can be like bending over backwards for me, and just not my cup of tea, to say the least. Some poems i have always found to be hard to even understand, while reading them, as was it to understand some of the poems we got handed in class. One being called “Nine”, it was as if this poem could mean a million different things, it was like a math problem having to put the bits and pieces together to even understand it a little, if not completely. At that point i was dreading what was soon to become of me and what i was about to put myself through. Until, the same day about 30 minutes later after talking to our partners and discussing the poems, when we were asked to go onto blackboard and click on these links. At first i was puzzled to see what we are about to look at. As soon as Professor Liu asked us to click the name of the poem we were just looking at on a white plain piece of paper, i clicked and become instantly amazed. Clicking each puzzle piece as i read “Nine” again, but in a different way. To me, it made the poem so much more clear to me, as if i could understand what the meaning of the poem was really about now. Breaking up the poem while showing pictures to represent each line, as if it told a story. After that one i checked out another poem online, that was in my pamphlet that we were handed in the beginning of class. It was called “The Best Cigarette”, this poem was so different. The poem was read to you by a voice that made the poem come to life, it was as if i was there and knew exactly what he was saying as he read it, with a clip of a flame burning in the background like a video to show what was going on, throughout the whole poem. In aw, the class was told what this different type of poetry was called, “electronic poetry”.

Every class so far, I have learned so much about electronic literature, not just from hearing, but getting to experience it in so many different ways, by seeing it. Getting to experience it, i have realized that “electronic literature tests the boundaries of the literary and it challenges us to rethink our assumptions of what it can do or be”( “New Media Poetics” ). Electronic Literature is created in symbiociations, meaning that the poem can be associated with symbols, form, movement, imagery, navigation, and a non-linear structure. It takes you into this whole different world, away from that boring piece of paper with black ink on it, and let’s you experience such an incredible way of being able to experience a poem in a totally different perspective of then what you are used to.

Getting to wonder what the next poem is going to be like, as you travel through the internet, seeking all the many possible worlds that they have out there for E-poetry. To me every poem, has something special to it to make it, in it’s own special way a unique piece, I have not yet seen one piece that is identical in anyway. The uniqueness of the poem could be anything from colors, fonts. imagery, and other visual effects that no piece of plain white paper could let you experience (“A Quick Buzz”). You can’t hear sounds from a plain piece of paper right in front of you. If we didn’t have e-poetry we wouldn’t be able to experience poems in a totally different, yet exciting way. Being able to see a poem so differently off a sheet of paper, and on a screen. Sounds can make the E-Poem unique. Like i said earlier about the e-poem called “ The Best Cigarette”. First reading it off the sheet of paper was a lot harder to understand, but also it didn’t come off as anything special to me, it didn’t catch me eye at all. However, as soon as i got to the e-poetry part of it, i instantly had a totally different perspective of it. The e-poetry part of it made me want to hear more and more, wishing it would never end. The voice in the background of the poem fit it just right, having different harmonies as he read it. The theme in the background of the flame burning and video going on completed the mood of the poem and made you able to feel like you were in his place experiencing what was going on.

There are so many different necessities that you can put into an e-poem to make it stick out to someone. One other poem that i can recall, reading for homework one night, that was totally different then any other e-poem i had seen before, was called “Catch the Land minds”. The reason this poem stuck out to me was because they made this poem into some sort of a game, while it seemed to be trying to make a political statement at the same time. This poem came off as a ad for the internet, such as when something pops up on your screen and it says something like catch the runaway hamster, by clicking with your mouse and win a free laptop. This was just how the land mind game went all except if you caught a land mind, or missed it, you would get all these interesting facts, as if it were a political statement.

Another poem that i recently found while looking through websites, was this poem called “Diver”. It starts out with just a pretty background of colors, soon words start coming up from the bottom in stanzas, some words bigger then others, as if they mean something more to the poem, then the other words do. This poem is trying to tell you what happened to a person that passed away,while at the same time making it easier to understand, with not a lot even going on. Simple functions added to the piece to make the words go upward. Even the simplest actions added to the poem make it easier to understand, just the littlest bit, while it being so much more entertaining then just a plain piece of paper with ink on it sitting in front of you, for you to read.

While attempting to write my own E-poetry, i came to the conclusion that it is a lot more work then you would expect (well for the more characterized poems with more transitions). Such as making each individual letter have their own transition. Doing just one word with 5 letters could take you up to 5 minutes. Now think about if you wrote a whole poem, with 75 words, with each individual letter having its own transitions. Just that could take you over a hour to do, not even including writing your poem up first and then adding whatever else you want to add into your e-poetry poem. I attempted to write e-poetry in class on Microsoft powerpoint, there was so much to do with it, that it just started becoming so confusing, while learning new things, i forgot how to even use them and re-find them when i needed to accommodate them into my poem. However, my poem that i ended up starting for homework, i am not using Microsoft powerpoint seeings that my mac has a different program called keynote. This program to me, seems a tad bit less confusing, and it is probably only because i got taught how to do a lot of additions in keynote when i bought my computer by one of the people that work there. I also noticed while using key note some of the options are a lot more efficient then that of powerpoint. I realized when trying to get the white off the background of a picture from the internet that it was a lot more accurate with getting just the picture on the background, then having the pictures background on it as well as mine in my poem. While in powerpoint it wasn't accurate at all, it would just turn black and only do a certain amount even how much i tried to play with it, to make it look better. Even though, it was a lot more work then just handwriting a poem, i found it a lot more fun and meaningful, making me realize my poem could mean even more to myself after making it an e-poem. It allowed me to actually express myself more in someway, by adding little things to it, then just letting someone sit there and stare at a piece of paper.

To me, e-poetry had made me have a huge change of mind in poems, to thinking poems were so boring and a waste of time, to making me want to go and watch and understand what they are trying to say in a poem. I could have never imagined something i absolutely had no interest in, could suddenly be at the top of my list, just because of seeing something in a different view that I was able to experience. “ To see electronic literature through the lens of print is in a significance sense, not to see it all” ( “New Media Poetics”).

Citations:

Poems:

Nine