[Reader-list] Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities

[Rahul Asthana]

River,
I finally found time to go through this thread and I
join Keith in commending you on a gem of a post. Some
points that came to my mind are-
a)How much of the effects of a virtual identity,
physicality etc. and other benefits\baggage of the
internet apply to poetry in particular, as opposed to
other genres of literature? Is internet more conducive
to poetry?
b)The question about identity and the great cyber
poet-
English is and will be the dominant language of the
internet. Along with this, at least in third world
countries, there is a certain elitism associated with
using the internet to be part of an online community.
Also, since the internet is less burdened by
geographical boundaries and other ethnicity based
considerations, this may turn out to be a hindrance in
disguise. I got this impression from your post that
you somehow felt that cultural allusions you carry in
your poetry maybe a baggage that is inconvenient for
you to explain. So, internet poetry may, unwittingly,
strive to reach for the lowest common denominator of
expression .This would certainly preclude the
vernacular tradition, both in language and subject,
from internet poetry. Not that this is good or bad,
just that this may be a trend.
c)On communities, or how do cyber communities affect
poetry , though this point seems to be connected to
point b), I think a study of cyber communities merits
a much larger scope and can unravel many interesting
findings about human behavior. The point I want to
make is that your research may intersect with a domain
that might require a more rigorous approach than one
may expect from just a viewpoint of poetic expression.
regards,
Rahul

--- "River ." <river_side1 at hotmail.com> wrote:


---------------------------------

My fingers stammer as I type this "first post".
Repeated injunctions against the very idea of a "first
post" have made me strangely nervous about my foray
into the world of the sarai reader-list. I read "first
posts" all last evening, thought about my prompt
fellow fellows and got nervouser and nervouser. It’s
just that, these days, words have become unfriendly
and have taken to skulking in corners…not a nice thing
to happen to anyone; especially not to a teacher of
english who has recently made extraordinary claims
about her ability to understand the nature of poetry.
My "first post", then, is more-or-less a truncated
version of my proposal and introduces some of the key
areas that I will be looking at in the course of my
research. Comments and observations will be very
welcome. 



My research project on poetry sites run by MSN,
entitled, "Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry
Communities", will start with the idea of disguises
and constructed identities in computer-mediated
communication and will try to see how exercising the
choice of taking on pretty anonymity may change the
concept of poetry. Can anonymous poetry, or rather,
poetry written under interesting screen names or
"nicks", change the way poetry is traditionally
understood (as a lyric/subjective medium)? Is this
self-naming of the poet-persona an attempt to
renegotiate the ordinarily held assumptions of the
poetically created artefact as being stitched to the
body and the imagination of the individual who created
the text? The identities that are fostered in
cyberspace, especially in such poetry communities,
compel us to reconsider definitions of the term,
virtual community. Do these poetry sites manage to
erase geographical/cartographical identities? Do these
poetry sites show any gendered separation? How do the
ideological structures of the poetic texts manifest
themselves in spaces of anonymity or constructed
identities? These are some questions that I would like
to begin with in my research.



Recent studies on Hypertext Theory have problematised
concepts like the physicality of the written text, as
it exists in words and lines and the intelligibility
of the text (the meaning and content behind the
empirical text setting). When we look at the work of
theorists like George Landow, we see how they have
relocated the written word in hyperreality by
addressing the computer’s power to disperse and
recombine texts. In the MSN Poetry Groups that I seek
to study, the incorporation of annotative links,
attachments to enhance readings, multimedia
projections of poetry, all can fall within recent
theories of hypertextuality. I propose to study the
generic constraints of traditional poetry that are
subverted in these sites. The power of the linear
text, the publishing industry, the superiority of the
published author, all these hierarchies are almost
dismissed in the sites that I wish to take up for
analysis. My desire, then, would be to see how
releasing (or maybe, how fettering) these dismissals
will be to both the cyberpoet and the cyberreader. The
movement of the poem from the printed page to a
computer screen that shows an MSN Poetry Group banner
and pages that are monotonously purple, light blue,
yellow and orange, is a tortuous one and requires
basic computing skills (like how not to get annoying
html signs to taint the meaning of the poem) and
tempts us to reconfigure the new slippery space
between technology and poetry. 



I would also like to study the architecture of these
poetry sites and see how one has to travel through
complicated alleys of links to navigate the various
"boards". Incidentally, there are very few pure poetry
sites. There is always some space for the stray prose
fiction writer, for non-literary chitchat, for fun and
games in the true Rheingoldian spirit of community.
Sometimes, there are sites that divide their poetry
boards into further categories like, Haiku, erotic
poetry, dark/horror poetry, comic poetry etc. This
categorisation into forms is interesting because it
means more links to be traversed, more spaces to be
negotiated within that virtual space.



Since I propose to use my own self as an
"ethnographer" in this study, I regularly post poems
as well as comments of the frivolous variety on at
least four sites. In these poetry sites, nobody knows
my real name, I am known by my "screen name", River,
and I post as river_side1 or river__side1. 



To use the traditional term in ethnomethodology, I
would be a "participant observer" and would enquire
closely into the modalities of online research. The
lack of physical presence in this type of research
would, obviously, change many of the key definitions
of contact and intimate person-to-person analysis.
Moreover, the easy accessibility of archival notes
within these sites may render difficult excavation
unnecessary. The final problem that would have to be
resolved regarding the nature of the study would be
the reconceptualisation of the word "community"
itself. The increasing interfaces between territorial
reality and the hyperreal will have to be taken into
consideration. 



I would also have to problematise the acceptance of my
"Indian" poetry, in these sites. The construction of
the woman from India happens at various levels and my
poems and I are sometimes accepted only after I submit
lengthy annotations (obviously as links). This
construction gets even more complicated when Assamese
words, rituals and customs, games, tales have to be
translated in order to make the ordinary, online
poetry surfer "get a hang" of whatever it is I am
trying to communicate to him/her. 



 

Nitoo Das

Department of English

Indraprastha College for Women

University of Delhi.


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