[Reader-list] Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN PoetryCommunities

[Punam Zutshi]

Rahul,

I may be speaking out of turn...not sure of the rules of the reading list,
perhaps it is far more courteous to let River/Nitoo respond.I lamely hope
this may be viewed as a way of pushing River to respond!

You write at the end of your mail "I think a study of cyber communities
merits a much larger scope and can unravel many interesting findings about
human behavior. The point I want to make is that your research may intersect
with a domain
 that might require a more rigorous approach than one may expect from just a
viewpoint of poetic expression"

If the participation in poetry communities is a method of participant
observation as River/Nitoo Das is proposing , then drawing on one's own
experience and poetic expression no longer remains just a resource or a
viewpoint but becomes ethnography or at least a case study not less rigorous
than the questions that you have so systematically drawn attention to.

The idea of community and communities and poetry , hypertextual and
otherwise can certainly be illuminated but human behaviour in any meaningful
sense, may be a bit beyond the scope of this project.

Regards,

Punam

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rahul Asthana" <rahul_capri at yahoo.com>
To: "River ." <river_side1 at hotmail.com>; <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN
PoetryCommunities


> River,
> I finally found time to go through this thread and I
> join Keith in commending you on a gem of a post. Some
> points that came to my mind are-
> a)How much of the effects of a virtual identity,
> physicality etc. and other benefits\baggage of the
> internet apply to poetry in particular, as opposed to
> other genres of literature? Is internet more conducive
> to poetry?
> b)The question about identity and the great cyber
> poet-
> English is and will be the dominant language of the
> internet. Along with this, at least in third world
> countries, there is a certain elitism associated with
> using the internet to be part of an online community.
> Also, since the internet is less burdened by
> geographical boundaries and other ethnicity based
> considerations, this may turn out to be a hindrance in
> disguise. I got this impression from your post that
> you somehow felt that cultural allusions you carry in
> your poetry maybe a baggage that is inconvenient for
> you to explain. So, internet poetry may, unwittingly,
> strive to reach for the lowest common denominator of
> expression .This would certainly preclude the
> vernacular tradition, both in language and subject,
> from internet poetry. Not that this is good or bad,
> just that this may be a trend.
> c)On communities, or how do cyber communities affect
> poetry , though this point seems to be connected to
> point b), I think a study of cyber communities merits
> a much larger scope and can unravel many interesting
> findings about human behavior. The point I want to
> make is that your research may intersect with a domain
> that might require a more rigorous approach than one
> may expect from just a viewpoint of poetic expression.
> regards,
> Rahul
>
> --- "River ." <river_side1 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
> My fingers stammer as I type this "first post".
> Repeated injunctions against the very idea of a "first
> post" have made me strangely nervous about my foray
> into the world of the sarai reader-list. I read "first
> posts" all last evening, thought about my prompt
> fellow fellows and got nervouser and nervouser. It's
> just that, these days, words have become unfriendly
> and have taken to skulking in corners.not a nice thing
> to happen to anyone; especially not to a teacher of
> english who has recently made extraordinary claims
> about her ability to understand the nature of poetry.
> My "first post", then, is more-or-less a truncated
> version of my proposal and introduces some of the key
> areas that I will be looking at in the course of my
> research. Comments and observations will be very
> welcome.
>
>
>
> My research project on poetry sites run by MSN,
> entitled, "Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry
> Communities", will start with the idea of disguises
> and constructed identities in computer-mediated
> communication and will try to see how exercising the
> choice of taking on pretty anonymity may change the
> concept of poetry. Can anonymous poetry, or rather,
> poetry written under interesting screen names or
> "nicks", change the way poetry is traditionally
> understood (as a lyric/subjective medium)? Is this
> self-naming of the poet-persona an attempt to
> renegotiate the ordinarily held assumptions of the
> poetically created artefact as being stitched to the
> body and the imagination of the individual who created
> the text? The identities that are fostered in
> cyberspace, especially in such poetry communities,
> compel us to reconsider definitions of the term,
> virtual community. Do these poetry sites manage to
> erase geographical/cartographical identities? Do these
> poetry sites show any gendered separation? How do the
> ideological structures of the poetic texts manifest
> themselves in spaces of anonymity or constructed
> identities? These are some questions that I would like
> to begin with in my research.
>
>
>
> Recent studies on Hypertext Theory have problematised
> concepts like the physicality of the written text, as
> it exists in words and lines and the intelligibility
> of the text (the meaning and content behind the
> empirical text setting). When we look at the work of
> theorists like George Landow, we see how they have
> relocated the written word in hyperreality by
> addressing the computer's power to disperse and
> recombine texts. In the MSN Poetry Groups that I seek
> to study, the incorporation of annotative links,
> attachments to enhance readings, multimedia
> projections of poetry, all can fall within recent
> theories of hypertextuality. I propose to study the
> generic constraints of traditional poetry that are
> subverted in these sites. The power of the linear
> text, the publishing industry, the superiority of the
> published author, all these hierarchies are almost
> dismissed in the sites that I wish to take up for
> analysis. My desire, then, would be to see how
> releasing (or maybe, how fettering) these dismissals
> will be to both the cyberpoet and the cyberreader. The
> movement of the poem from the printed page to a
> computer screen that shows an MSN Poetry Group banner
> and pages that are monotonously purple, light blue,
> yellow and orange, is a tortuous one and requires
> basic computing skills (like how not to get annoying
> html signs to taint the meaning of the poem) and
> tempts us to reconfigure the new slippery space
> between technology and poetry.
>
>
>
> I would also like to study the architecture of these
> poetry sites and see how one has to travel through
> complicated alleys of links to navigate the various
> "boards". Incidentally, there are very few pure poetry
> sites. There is always some space for the stray prose
> fiction writer, for non-literary chitchat, for fun and
> games in the true Rheingoldian spirit of community.
> Sometimes, there are sites that divide their poetry
> boards into further categories like, Haiku, erotic
> poetry, dark/horror poetry, comic poetry etc. This
> categorisation into forms is interesting because it
> means more links to be traversed, more spaces to be
> negotiated within that virtual space.
>
>
>
> Since I propose to use my own self as an
> "ethnographer" in this study, I regularly post poems
> as well as comments of the frivolous variety on at
> least four sites. In these poetry sites, nobody knows
> my real name, I am known by my "screen name", River,
> and I post as river_side1 or river__side1.
>
>
>
> To use the traditional term in ethnomethodology, I
> would be a "participant observer" and would enquire
> closely into the modalities of online research. The
> lack of physical presence in this type of research
> would, obviously, change many of the key definitions
> of contact and intimate person-to-person analysis.
> Moreover, the easy accessibility of archival notes
> within these sites may render difficult excavation
> unnecessary. The final problem that would have to be
> resolved regarding the nature of the study would be
> the reconceptualisation of the word "community"
> itself. The increasing interfaces between territorial
> reality and the hyperreal will have to be taken into
> consideration.
>
>
>
> I would also have to problematise the acceptance of my
> "Indian" poetry, in these sites. The construction of
> the woman from India happens at various levels and my
> poems and I are sometimes accepted only after I submit
> lengthy annotations (obviously as links). This
> construction gets even more complicated when Assamese
> words, rituals and customs, games, tales have to be
> translated in order to make the ordinary, online
> poetry surfer "get a hang" of whatever it is I am
> trying to communicate to him/her.
>
>
>
>
>
> Nitoo Das
>
> Department of English
>
> Indraprastha College for Women
>
> University of Delhi.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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