MMLA '06, 11/09/06 - 11/12/06; Chicago

Call for abstracts on the relationship between poetry and the cyber-age.

Poets, professors, and lovers of poetry in general repeatedly assert that the
book as an aesthetic object has lasting value. But are we kidding ourselves?
 With a readership increasingly reliant on the computer, and a new generation
of students who have never known a time when the Internet was more than a
click away, is it only a matter of time before poetry is primarily an element of
cyberspace? Is this good or bad? With more than a hundred fonts, point
sizes, untold programs and graphic elements, how will the function of the computer
affect the actual forms of poetry?

Possible topics: future of the written poem; internet poetry sites; effect of
graphic programs on reading; the typewriter and the computer compared; cyber
poetics.

All aspects of high and low culture are associated with the computer,
including poetry of every make and caliber, composed under any number of rhetorical
circumstances, and posted in any number of ways. Likewise, through the
Internet, poetry gains some measure of freedom from the constraints and expectations
of the academic press. Indeed, formal and informal experiments of form and
genre, such as digital photography and pop music combined with poetry, take
place on a daily basis from all walks of life. Considering that the computer
reaches virtually every academic institution, every library, almost every business
enterprise, and nearly fifty percent of households in the United States,
poetics are poised for evolution based upon this new, highly democratic
technology. This is a subject not yet discussed or explored enough through scholarly
conferences.

Send C.V.s and abstracts of 250 words (20 minute presentation) by 4/19/06 to
brickeyr_at_purdue.edu. Panel has been accepted.

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Received on Fri Apr 07 2006 - 10:39:25 EDT