Looking for feedback: bibliography or reading list of digital poetry?
Friends and colleagues, as I try to begin working on revising the dissertation into a book on digital poetry, I wonder what you think of this idea: turning my (currently haphazardly constructed) Diigo list on digital poetry into something like a bibliography or reading list for digital poetry that could be included at the end of the book? I suppose that if this were a bookbound topic, such a bibliography would be called an annotated bibliography and probably would be viewed as musty and old-school. But don’t we all so often have to field questions from folks interested in digital poetry such as “ok, so where is it? where can I find it?” Any thoughts?
I’m also curious to hear from you digital poets whether it’s pie-in-the-sky to think that I might also include the poems of yours that I discuss in the book on a CD to ensure stability, long-term access etc.? Or does this sound like a copyright nightmare?
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7 Responses to “Looking for feedback: bibliography or reading list of digital poetry?”.
Perhaps we need different categories of lists, some for education, some for the popular press, etc….things like this are perfect to farm out to students….!!!!!!!
Jason
I don’t think it’s pie-in-the-sky to publish a book with a CD with some works, given the authors’ permission to do so. Kate Hayles did it. I think that makes books about e-lit easier to teach, brings them to new audiences, and from an archival standpoint it doesn’t hurt to get the bits out there as widely as possible. I think the annotated bib is a good idea. I think however it`s an especially good idea if it is also on the web in a site accompanying the book, or as a special contribution to ebr or another online journal. I think it’s good to get the publisher supporting reuse of scholarly content in electronic media early in the process. For instance, if you had a chapter on an electronic writer’s work, and they allowed your publisher to include their work on a CD (presumably for free), it would make sense for them to want to have a copy of the chapter in which their work was discussed on their website. A publisher might not go for that, but the more often they are asked, and the more often logical arguments are put to them as to why this is likely to help sell the book, the more likely that policies are to change.
There is actually not very much to found which you wouldn’t get though Google .
At first glance I personally recognize 50 % of the the quoted sites …
Scott & Jason – thanks so much for the feedback, especially since people like you are one of the most important “target audiences” for the book. I will definitely at the very least propose the idea of a CD and annotated bibliography to the press – I have no idea whether they’ll be receptive or not (to the added cost of the CD, for one, and added labor of obtaining permissions for another) but I’ll do my best to make a strong argument. The bibliography would also, as Jason suggests, be divided by topic/theme or something to make it more user-friendly. Thanks again!
Providing the works on CD can be really helpful as many works disappear from the net or move or change names so Googling doesn’t work. Sometimes sites keep the same name but change content (this can be particularly confusing). As someone whose work is in Kate Hayle’s book (I don’t remember if it is on the CD however) I can tell you that the way she dealt with the authors of the work was exemplary & if you do what she did many people will be happy to participate and provide you with print quality images and files for your CD. The thing she did that so impressed me was to send me (and I assume all the authors of works she discussed) a draft of what she wrote about my piece with a request for comments, specifically asking me to indicate if she had misunderstood the work. As is happens her analysis was excellent to begin with and I certainly don’t think authors of works discussed have a right to tell critics what to write, but I am sure she got good cooperation from authors by making this gesture.
Thanks for your note Millie – preservation (and longevity) is definitely something I’m concerned about so I will try to persuade the publisher to do a CD…though I confess, even though I admire Hayles’ community-building gesture of checking her readings with the author, I worry that the author might exert undue influence. The e-literature community needs to be more willing to be critical of each other’s work, without fear of hurting feelings or alienating anyone! Though I understand this can be very tricky…in ANY community!
Lori– I agree that there is a lack of “critical” criticism in epoetry. The majority of references within the epoetry author community are links and blog posts which at least implicitly endorse the work, and usually explicitly endorse it. Rarely does one find extensive analyses of epoetry or even bad reviews. People within epoetry generally want to promote the genre each time they mention a work, and so they the don’t say anything too obscure or complex (which might scare off people new to the genre) or negative (because a negative review will not attract new readers to epoetry).
Edward Picot’s Hyperliterature Exchange (http://hyperex.co.uk/) website is an exception: he posts accessible detailed reviews in which he dares to actually be critical of works he reviews and places the e-works in the context of literary and new media history. (Although I doubt he would choose to devote an entire article to a work he really disapproved of because he is also promoting the genre, as are we all.) I’m sure there are other sources for good criticism of epoetry, perhaps we should make a list.
On the other hand, there is a whole secondary literature about new media written by non-practitioners whose background is cultural criticism or art history or media studies which I find totally incomprehensible. One can read these articles and have no sense whatsoever of what the works being discussed actually are. This is particularly unenlightening when the works are gallery-based rather than online, so one has no access to the primary work.
(I guess I understand why these methods are ok for traditional literature: You don’t have to describe Ulysses and summarize the plot and explain Modernism when you write a new critical article about it, because one assumes that people reading criticism already read it and know where to find it if they haven’t. This is a reasonable assumption even for obscure print books, but a new media gallery piece may be completely inaccessible to readers of the critical article or even permanently gone with no documentation left behind other than the criticism. Yet another argument for a CD. You can be much more detailed and subtle if readers can actually view the works you are discussing as they read.)
BTW, Kate certainly didn’t say she would write what we told her to write, she just asked for comments in advance.
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