<div dir="ltr">naturally, or perhaps i should say cyborganically, following these threads with interest & appreciate the expansiveness. imo, the Williams quote/poem is good, of course, but somewhat overused. the poem i chose as epigraph to <i>Prehistoric Digital Poetry</i> (written by Canadian Lionel Kearns), in favor over anything else, refers to WCW & takes it further, relevant to this discussion. pasted here, probably dis-formatted<br><br><br>“The poem is a machine,” said that famous man, and so I’m building one.<br>Or at least I’m having it built, because I want something big and impressive and<br>automatic.<br>You see, people will stand in front of it and insert money, dimes or quarters,<br>depending upon the poem’s locus.<br>Yes the whole thing will clank and hum and light up and issue a string of words<br>on colored ticker-tape.<br>Or maybe the customers will wear ear-phones and turn small knobs so the<br>experience will be more audile-tactile than old fashioned visual.<br>In any case they will only get one line at a time,<br>This being the most important feature of my design which is based on the<br>principle that,<br>In poetry, “one perception must immediately and directly lead to a further<br>perception,”<br>And therefore the audience will be compelled to feed in coin after coin.<br>Now I admit that the prototype model that you see on display is something of a<br>compromise, as it has a live poet concealed inside.<br>But I assure you that this crudity will eventually be eliminated<br>Because each machine, I mean each poem, is to be fully computerized<br>And so able to stand on its own feet.<br>—Lionel Kearns, “Kinetic Poem” (1968)<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, May 5, 2017 at 1:22 PM, Margaret J Rhee <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mrhee@uoregon.edu" target="_blank">mrhee@uoregon.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br>
"There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small<br>
(or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing<br>
sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is<br>
redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship.<br>
But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.<br>
As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical<br>
more than a literary character."<br>
<br>
I'd like to start a thread about this quote by WCW, that Mike raised here.<br>
A friend the Mexican poet Hugo Martinez, remarked we should replace machine<br>
with machete.<br>
<br>
"There must be something hardwired into its machinery--a heartbeat, a<br>
pulse--that keeps it breathing." -- Ed Hirsch<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Dr. Christopher T. Funkhouser<br>Program Director, Communication and Media<br>Department of Humanities<br>New Jersey Institute of Technology<br>University Heights<br>Newark, NJ 07102<br><a href="http://web.njit.edu/%7Efunkhous" target="_blank">http://web.njit.edu/~funkhous</a><br><a href="mailto:funkhous@njit.edu" target="_blank">funkhous@njit.edu</a></div></div>
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