Digital poetics: the making of E-poetries

Product Description

Glazier investigates the ways in which computer technology has influenced and transformed the writing and dissemination of poetry

In Digital Poetics, Loss Pequeño Glazier argues that the increase in computer technology and accessibility, specifically the World Wide Web, has created a new and viable place for the writing and dissemination of poetry. Glazier’s work not only introduces the reader to the current state of electronic writing but also outlines the historical and technical contexts out of which electronic poetry has emerged and demonstrates some of the possibilities of the new medium.

Glazier examines three principal forms of electronic textuality: hypertext, visual/kinetic text, and works in programmable media. He considers avant-garde poetics and its relationship to the on-line age, the relationship between web “pages” and book technology, and the way in which certain kinds of web constructions are in and of themselves a type of writing. With convincing alacrity, Glazier argues that the materiality of electronic writing has changed the idea of writing itself. He concludes that electronic space is the true home of poetry and, in the 20th century, has become the ultimate “space of poesis.”

Digital Poetics will attract a readership of scholars and students interested in contemporary creative writing and the potential of electronic media for imaginative expression.


From Publishers Weekly

"From hypertext to visual/kinetic text to writing in a networked and programmable media, there is a tangible feel of arrival in the spelled air" of on-line poetry. In Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries, Loss Pequeno Glazier (The Parts), professor and director of SUNY Buffalo's esteemed Electronic Poetry Center (wings.buffalo.edu/epc), theorizes on the practices and potentials of this inchoate medium-cum-venue. Tracing this 21st-century electronic evolution of poets' "awareness of the conditions of texts" to 20th-century experimental poetry, Glazier delineates the Wild West of formal innovation (e.g., interactive poetries; "books" whose contents can be constantly reordered) and explores the inevitable changes this will precipitate in content. The book is part of the Modern and Contemporary Poetics series edited by poet-critics Charles Bernstein and Hank Lazer.
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Review

“[Glazier] does a superb job of demonstrating the relevance of 20th century innovative poetries as a means of understanding the implications and possiblities of current digital writing developments.”
—Jerome McGann, author of The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style


About the Author

Loss Pequeño Glazier is Director of the Electronic Poetry Center and Professor of Media Study at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo.