Comments on: Print and Rhyme

By: Micah Towery

Micah Towery — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:49:06 +0000

one more aspect of these thoughts: poetic lines were probably created as a function of end-rhyme. but as end-rhyme becomes only a convention (and has ceased to be a necessary aspect of what it means to be a “poem”), the line has changed function to helping create a sense of movement in the line. but now electronic poems are challenging the necessity of the poetic line in poetry.

By: Micah Towery

Micah Towery — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:45:38 +0000

i was thinking of animated poems, mostly. where the lines and words from the poem will glide across the screen, fade in and out, etc. part of the function of the line, as i see it, is to help create that sense of rhythm, to propel the reader forward (in a more self-aware way than, say, prose). in animated electronic poetry, the line doesn’t push the reader forward, the animation creates the movement.

or, i’ve seen electronic poems where the words themselves are hyperlinks, so a reader may “fall through” the line to a completely different page. i talked about this a little more on the next post about print and rhyme (here: https://thethepoetry.com/2010/07/more-about-mcluhan-and-the-poetic-line/ ), but the general idea is that we’re moving away from a line, and more towards a “field” of action. perhaps?

it seems crazy to think that the line as an aspect of poetry may be on its way “out”…maybe not. but as i see it, the line plays a function. it was used in poetry because it actually had a job (it wasn’t just a random convention that people came up with, right?).
but perhaps give it a hundred years of electronic journals and poetry, and the line will seem as relatively functionless as end-rhyme now seems to us. or, perhaps not functionless…but as we’ve lost the functional foundation of end-rhyme (i.e., mnemonic device), it becomes a pure convention that you can use at will (for aesthetic reasons, perhaps….which is not a bad reason, but it’s certainly not necessary for a poem to have rhyme to be considered a “poem”).

By: Christopher Robinson

Christopher Robinson — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:34:33 +0000

I don’t follow what you mean about the line becoming unnecessary as an instrument of propulsion when we have “digital animation.” Can you elaborate?

By: More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line

More about McLuhan and the Poetic Line — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:38:14 +0000

[...] In a recent post, I based a discussion about the relationship between the poetic line and print cult… I was recently listening to the below lecture by McLuhan and he discussed the effects of the phonetic alphabet. He said that the phonetic alphabet divorced the visual sense from the other senses by emphasizing it above the others. This separation creates the possibility of linearity, the space for “logicians, analysts, classifiers, the individualist pattern of Greek life.” The phoenecian alphabet made possible Euclid, who revealed that visual space is continuous and connected and homogeneous and static. All the other spaces created by the other senses–of touch, acoustics, kinesthesial–all these other senses are discontinuous, resonant and dynamic.” He gives an interesting example to demonstrate this. A boy is on his first flight and asks his dad, “When do we get small?” The “canopy” of the plane limits the field of vision, creates a static environment. The moment a man with a parachute jumps out of the plane, he feels one inch tall. [...]

By: Adam Fitzgerald

Adam Fitzgerald — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:23:12 +0000

Nor will human beings stop using legs, well, I hope not. But what will they use their legs for? To walk to the street, to bike on the bank, to drive on the drive, etc. Poetry is changing, not that it hasn’t, nor that it shouldn’t, but what?

By: Van Bakker

Van Bakker — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:19:27 +0000

That is very interesting. However, while it does make sense, I don’t think that the poetry will ever stop using words, since even the oral poetry used words as well. I don’t see the poetry going only visual. Let’s just hope I am right on that.