Quote Fruit: Mark Leidner

In an interview with Alex Phillips:

"Sound and rhythm, ... those were like waves I wanted to surf, and in order to surf them you have to think about something else"

Hot Potato

Today's Hot Potato link, passed on by Justin Marks on Twitter.

Twitter is a media form which I have resisted due to information overload. However, the ability to discover new information (feel free to substitute "connections/perspectives/magic/art") through the physical flow of your day is crucial for artists in general and writers (poets) specifically. In a world of increasing individualism driving the further introspection of poetry, you can still find wonder and discourse through The new media. Think of it as an adaptation of Gift Culture from Lewis Hyde's The Gift. This interesting article suggests what authorship means in new media (Twitter specifically):

If information discovery plays such a central role in how we make sense of the world in this new media landscape, then it is a form of creative labor in and of itself. And yet our current normative models for crediting this kind of labor are completely inadequate, if they exist at all.

Q: Can the artful "curation" of Twitter be poetry?

Read more @ niemanlab.org

Bonus butter link:

Is Twitter writing, or is it speech?

Poetry outside poetry: Social sites

I used to write — poems, stories, essays, daily journal entries, thoughts on napkins, whatever I could use to spew ideas on. . . . I got into building more websites “just for fun” — there’s a lot of creative energy that goes into getting the CSS and HTML, the content and audience, just right. And now I organize. My creative needs are met by arranging people, ideas, and spaces together like I used to string together words or snippets of code. The result is still a piece of art — something I can point to and say, “I did that, and it’s beautiful, it’s even more interesting than I imagined it would be, and it has an effect on the people who encounter it.” Only now the art is much more alive. It grows and changes and takes on its own personality and it needs to be constantly fed and nurtured to survive.
I’ll be honest: poems were way easier. They certainly didn’t care if I got sick.
About a month ago, when I was having a crisis of direction, I called my dear friend Melissa and demanded,“What do I want to be when I grew up, again??” She said, “Sarah, you’re a poet who raises armies and brings people together, and sometimes those poems look like websites.” And sometimes those websites look like armies. And sometimes those armies look like poems.

- Sarah Dopp, Professional Creative

This is a long quote, but I kept it mostly intact for a couple reasons:

1. Sarah Dopp is a great friend of mine who deserves all the attention she gets. If you have a creative social project for the 'net, she's one of the first people to talk to.

2. I usually think of poetry as merely language, organized observation in service of restructuring the apparent world. But this quote raises the question about "poetry" as it relates to other art (and non-art). To hear Sarah and her friend Melissa tell it, creative social websites like Genderfork are much like poems. Genderfork takes a series of observations concerning the world, namely gender, then uses language (both visible and invisible (css, html)) to structure an exploration of those observations, the result of which is surprising to the "author" and elicits an emotional response from the reader much like a poem.

Genderfork started as a series of positioned statements in the form of picture and narrative. What happened next is really interesting and perhaps informs the evolution of poetry on the 'net: The singular author became multiple authors, each working together to extend the content, tone, and ultimately the "life" of the site. Just like a written poem, Genderfork left the control of the original author and was consumed and appropriated by its audience. And instead of keeping it at arms length, they rolled up their sleeves, stuck their hands in and made it better. If it's not poetry, it might be more successful than any poetry I know.

Even at more traditional(?) literature collaborative blogs, such as HTMLgiant have a slightly poetic feel. However, sites like that, though full of collaboration and displayed language construction, are still mostly external links. Genderfork is mostly internal language published.

Also of note, quickly, is the reference to poems being "easier." I understand the sentiment: that creating an ongoing site/project requires more energy from the author, but to what extent? When the authorship multiplies, the effort fades, correct? Something to chew on.

What do you think? Can websites be poetry or merely poetic? Does Genderfork fill the requirements of poetry? Is there a future of ongoing poem-sites that become fixtures in the poetic landscape? Do they already exist? Let me know your thoughts, give me examples!