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Brazil’s Jorge Luiz Antonio has published a book (which comes with a CD) about “electronic poetry” called Poesia Eletrônica (198 pages). My congratulations and thanks go out to him. Congratulations because I know he has been working on this for many years and I know some of the trials and tribulations he experienced through the process. Thanks because a visual poem of mine is on the cover, the CD, and the interface to the CD–and the art is printed and presented exceptionally well. So this is not an objective notice about Jorge’s book, but one from a friend of his.

The book (which is in Portuguese) contains a three-page preface in English by Chris Funkhouser–who has written the first book on the history of digital poetry. Among other things, Funkhouser looks at the way Antonio explores how electronic poetry involves “negotiations with digital processes”:

“With software, the programming generally involves establishing frameworks in which disparate elements–whether the different elements of a visual scenario, or files that contain different verbal passages–negotiate with one another, and are negotiated by the viewer. In the creation of automatically-generated text, graphical works, or hypertexts, artists present a virtual object that the user negotiates by plotting a course through the multiple dimensions or constellations of language. When we realize that all digital poetry involves some type of link, the importance of negotiation is further heightened. In hypertext, the link (as in node-to-node connection) is the primary mechanism by which a reader negotiates text. In graphical and multimedia poems (which foreground sonic and visual elements), different elements of the works are composed together as simultaneities. Text-generators present another type of linking, between the algorithm/program and the text as it comes to the reader. Links–literal or conceptual–are always present in this extended environment; the activation of computer coding creates a textual spark that is the foundation on which any digital poem is built.”

‘Navigation’ is related to ‘negotiation’ but they aren’t quite the same thing. ‘Negotiation’ encompasses ‘navigation’ but goes beyond it into dialogue and protocol, for instance. It also involves the intermedial, as Funkhouser points out, in negotiation between the elements of different media. And there are other wheels for “electronic poetry in negotiation with digital processes”.

Although the book is largely in Portuguese, the CD contains much material in English. There’s an introduction by Jorge and, also, chapter 1 has been translated into English.  Here is a passage from chapter 1:

“The technopoet is put, as the romantic poet, as a technodemiurge. The romantic poet’s reaction against the Industrial Revolution, creating a subjective world, ideal, paradisiacal, resembles the one of the technopoet, that, facing the technopoly is overpowering. It is a technocentric world that offers him/her also a poetic language. The central question is to subvert the technological language, transforming it into a technopoetical language. This way, the culture doesn’t surrender to the technology, but it receives the poet’s intervention, which turns the technology into another form of poetic communication. These procedures become, then, a poeticizing of computational technology.”

We might also say that the “poeticizing of computational technology” gets some blood pumping through this technological extension of humanity, turning it from a cold metal claw into something through which human fluids and feeling flow.

 The section of the CD that features critical/theoretical texts contains more than 100 texts that range internationally around the world from works by Jean-Pierre Balpe (in French) to Friedrich Block (he’s German but the texts are in English) to Alejandro Banda (Chile), Augusto de Campos (in Portuguese), Chris Funkhouser, Eduardo Kac, Ladislao Pablo (Argentina), and many others.

The CD also contains a wealth of electronic poetry. The poetry section contains work by over 200 artists. In a variety of languages. From modernist poetry to contemporary computer poetry. With emphasis on work from Brazil and South America. It’s quite a remarkable resource.

The CD also contains an 86-page chronology of digital poetry from 1959 to the present complete with graphics and, in many cases, links.

There’s also an extensive bibliography on the CD with links.

I’m very impressed with what Jorge has accomplished. Of course, I wish I understood Portuguese! But there is much English in the package–and much digital poetry that can be understood independent of any particular language.

Finally, I’d like to give you contact information so you can obtain a copy of the book yourself. There are only somewhere between 250 and 500 copies of it available, and you have to contact Jorge himself to get a copy, although the book will be published in a bilingual edition, at some point, in the USA. 

Jorge’s email address is jlantonio@uol.com.br . Jorge says “People can buy the book on line by asking me. There are three ways to send money: PayPal account, bank transference, and post office international payment order. The other alternative is to offer an exchange of books and/or CD-ROMs.”

You might also want to visit his blog at http://jlantonio.blog.uol.com.br . He also maintains a list of links to Brazilian digital poetry at http://vispo.com/misc/BrazilianDigitalPoetry.htm . 

by Jim Andrews
http://vispo.com

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