Tuesday, October 24, 2006

But first ...

... here's an encouraging word: Computers Are a Fad. Poetry Has Been Around For Centuries.


  1. Theater director Adrian Hall used to tell me, when I was a drama critic, that theater had been around for thousands of years before capitalism and hadn't really changed and wasn't really going to. That's because it takes the same amount of time to rehearse and stage a play today as it did for the Greeks.

  2. I fear poetry will stick around, but the medium - books - will start disappearing. And while William S. Burroughs' experiments had some charm, I have no interest in reading poetry created randomly and absurdly using technology. Let's hope the simple stuff by humans does survive, and continues to reach people.

  3. In his book _Poetry_As_Survival_, Gregory Orr illustrates a key facet of the power and importance of this "simple stuff by humans" -- the power to heal not only the author but to communicate a more fully integrated experience of life to the reader as well. As long as we will be struggling with order and disorder, trauma and hope, we will continue to make meaningful art. Machines will always be, at best, clever imitators.