Can electronics charm the elusive muse of poetry?
Poetry is arguably one of the most intimate and spiritually connecting forms of public communication that humanity has yet devised, an art that speaks from one heart to another. Is there any place for a computer in this relationship? To judge from the crude verse-generating programs one might typically stumble across on the Internet (“Poetry CreatOR” or “RoboPoem,” for instance)—which spew programmed textual nonsense—the answer is a resounding No. But there are many ways in which the computer has succeeded in bringing new inspiration to writers and new ways to connect with audiences. The computer enables the artist (poet) to communicate with more than text, adding images, movement, and sound; this capability is affecting both writing and the reader’s experience, argues literary scholar Maria Engberg of Uppsala University in Sweden. “The way digital poetry experiments with language raises questions and challenges conceptions of literature that were formed by printed books,” she says. Ex
