[Reader-list] another response to M Suri

[Vivek Narayanan]

Well, let me throw my hat in here as well.  I am skeptical of the little 
hypertext poetry I have seen so far, for reasons I have elaborated 
elsewhere ( see, for instance, my review of Stephanie Strickland, 
http://www.webdelsol.com/Perihelion/strickland.htm ), but I certainly 
don't feel that it would be a futile exercise. Nitoo asks for a 
definition of what poetry is, and what better than the one already given 
below by M Suri, namely, "to launch into space without a particular 
destination in mind, ultimately, to be lost in oblivion"?  Whatever we 
do, we will learn from.

I'm not sure I fully understand the concern over "plagiarism".  Now, let 
me be very clear, I am certainly disgusted by people who build their 
careers without giving credit where credit is due, but, that aside, we 
have to face the fact that poetry comes out of and goes into a 
commonly-shared pool of language.  Are we outlawing the 
borrowing/modification of lines from other poets, which has happened for 
centuries and used to be called "alluding"?  What do we do with the 
brilliant found poetry of poets like Edwin Morgan (who by the way has 
also rocked my mind with his purely visual, concrete poems which are not 
meant for oral performance but for display)?  What do we do with the Ern 
Malley affair, where two poets created a third, hoax, "fake" poet who 
borrowed lines but went on to be far more famous and highly regarded 
than either of them ( http://www.jacketmagazine.com/17/index.html ) or, 
with the canonical German poet Hans Magnus Ensenzburger's poetry machine 
from the 60s ( http://www.jacketmagazine.com/17/enz.html ) which 
processes  and regurgitates found text according to an algorithm?

The very nature of poetry is in sampling and re-circulation (although 
just borrowing/stealing lines does not automatically make you a good 
poet): this, we have to come to terms with.

Vivek

M Suri wrote:

>
> Sometimes, it's best that one procrastinates and never shakes one's 
> self of that sweet yet nagging self-indulgence of inaction.  Then one 
> can spare one's self and the world of one's inanities or overblown, 
> hypertectual meanderings.
>
> "Hypertext poetry"?  Unless one has seeded the internet with one's own 
> works and then used them to compose a poem (or any other literary 
> work, for that matter) one is plagiarising on  a massive scale.  This 
> is not poetry.  The effort of allowing one's mind, as a creator or a 
> reader, to travel in the fluidity of hypertext may be poetic but to 
> call the result a work of (original) poetry is, in my humble opinion, 
> sheer balderdash. It is web-surfing and that act may or may not be 
> poetic in its execution but the result is not poetry. All the 
> verbosity and pseudo-intellectual blather in the world will not 
> salvage this canard.
>
> Redefining an art form in one's own vision of it is not a new 
> exercise.  But naming it "hypertext poetry," particularly, in the 
> absence of any examples goes beyond the pale.  I'm all for 
> experimentation but "hypertext poetry" is an exercise in fulitlity 
> taken to the extreme.  I suspect someone went strolling among the 
> trees and lost sight of the forest and its constraints.
>
> Poetry is a medium which is not limited to the page. Its origins were 
> in the oral tradition.  A poem was recited. It could be short or even 
> an epic.  Regardless of its length it was a means of communicating 
> that made sense to the poet and the auditors. It increasingly became 
> incomprehensible to newer audiences who had lost touch with the 
> allegorical references or were too intellectually lazy to make an 
> effort to understand the poet and his poem, especially, when the 
> alternative modes of entertainment provided more facile comprehension 
> and enjoyment.
>
> Poems could also be created by the collective input of several poets. 
> However, to conceive of a poem as an exercise in the realm of 
> hypertext is to launch into space without a particular destination in 
> mind, ultimately, to be lost in oblivion.  Try reading to an audience 
> a poem created in hypertext at a poetry venue.  If you want to write 
> the Iliad or the Mahabharat, that's one thing but pray do not drag us 
> through hypertext to do it.  Poetry is straining to keep a hold on its 
> rapidly dimninishing audience, as it is.  I sincerely doubt that it 
> will retain, much less gain, an audience when one needs to explain its 
> new form with a treatise such as has been presented. 
>
> Enough said.
>
> Mani Suri
>