Welcome to the Language Laboratory

Ann Hamilton, Still Life (1988)

Let's try to rethink everything we "know" about poetry. Let's get rid of ideas such as Shakespeare, Roses are red & violets are blue, all of the roads less taken. Let's get rid of the wise sage prophet truth-teller oracle storyteller. Let's get rid of the professors, a bunch of idiots. Let's get rid of the poets with their pretentious berets and cigarettes and horrible traditional jazz.  Let's get rid of all remnants of Beat poetry Daddy-o saxophone bongos; spoken word emotional urgency. Let's ditch it all...  especially Wordsworth, Coleridge and the rest of the Romantic twaddle-pedlars.

Instead, let's take language (sounds, words, etc.) and subject it to trials and errors. Let's use language instead of being used by language. Let's experiment. Let's liberate language from the dead confines of the traditional page, the traditional  spread, the left to right, up to down rigidity. Traditional syntax, traditional structures, traditional "themes" of plot (boring), character (boring), and setting (boring): whatever, wake me up when you're through.

Let's recognize the historical and theoretical underpinnings of our new practices. Let's learn from and with our machines. Let's go for a ride or maybe foraride. Let's wait and see what happens and takeitfromthere.

Welcome to this iteration of Poetics Off the Page.  -- Casey