1. Tomorrow • Finish up anything remaining from today’s discussion: the visual tradition, chapbook questions… • Workshop: • Cassie’s “One day Quinn and I…” and “Sexy Title” • Peter’s “Story Time,” “Blizzard Memories,” and “Nature’s Mysteries.” • Judi’s “Are We Dead?” • Matt’s “Do you guys swim?” (?) • Judi: in virtual workshop? • Returned graded backwork.

2. Today • Bidart and Ai: the persona poem (and yesterday’s freewriting) • Chapooks and Reflective Letter • The Visual Tradition: option 2 of Poetry Project 2.

3. CHAPBOOKS • Interesting title. No “My Journey in Life” • Artistic bindings or otherwise unusual and interesting presentation are welcome. • Watch out for merely fancy or cute fonts and light or cliché decoration. • Table of contents, dedication page, pagination, author’s bio, acknowledgements. • May include older work, if you feel this will round it out or make it complete. • You can self-bind or take to printers or copy shop on campus or in town. • Content is most important. If you make an artistic presentation, you’ll be credited for that, but it’s not required. You do need standard book features.

4. Reflective Letter • You can just slip this into the chapbook, loose. • Read full instructions.

5. Concrete Poetry And the visual tradition.

6. The visual dimension of language and writing has always been of use and interest. • Pictographs • Petroglyphs • Hieroglyphs? • Logographic writing • Ideograms (though these were usually one-symbol representations of whole words)

7. And you probably remember …the pleasure you took as a kid, when you were just learning to “make your letters.” Most of us don’t pay much attention to the visual aspect of language anymore, but, for concretists and new media writers, it’s vital.

8. “Concrete poetry’s most conspicuous feature is its attention to the visual appearance of the text on the page” (Drucker 110). Like oral poetry, it returns us to the roots of meaning-making with language? “In its most generic application, the term ‘concrete poetry’ is used to designate all manner of shaped, typographically complex, visually self-conscious poetic works. The term ‘visual poetry’ is more general and thus more aptly used to describe a history which is as old as writing itself” (Drucker).

9. Go to New Media Presentation www.ndsu.edu/instruct/cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/NewMediaPresentation.htm (view this page up to New Media: Concrete/Visual Writing for the 21st Century)

10. New Media Poetry

11. What makes electronic writing S p e c i a l? S p e c i a l ?

12. Some of the first characteristics we noticed about “computer writing”: • Very easily manipulated text. • Utilitarian functions: storage, annotation, word processing • Reader interaction. • Circumvention of commercial control. • The LINKED NODE.

13. Suddenly…. written text was no longer LINEAR! LINEAR!

14. Thus we have Hypertext!!

15. Far distant reaches of the Web Dictionary Link Related Website Link Link HOMEPAGE Link Link Official Organization Site Link

16. The 80s saw some great experiments with hypertext, in particular… Michael Joyce’s electronic novel, Afternoon, A Story and other Eastgate work. (View portions of Joyce’s novel.)

17. Liberation from the constraints of the traditional page! This was, and still is, resisted. But, then, so was the printed word itself, which some ancient Greeks thought was an innovation that signaled the death of civilization (loss of memory skills…)!

18. Every big paradigm shift has been resisted and considered a degrading of what came before.

19. It’s apparent now that new media allow for a whole wealth of VISUAL AND AUDIAL EFFECTS! ...which is taking us well beyond simple “concrete poetry."

20. Let’s return now to New Media Presentation www.ndsu.edu/instruct/cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/NewMediaPresentation.htm

21. New Media Performance(Option 2 for Poetry Project #2) Instructions • Present to the class some form of visual poetry, whether electronic or hardcopy. • Presentation should include showing the piece as well as some narration, roughly 5-10 minutes. You can talk to us about what you were aiming for, what problems and successes you had, what possibilities the piece suggests to you for future work. Criteria • Materials should be VISIBLE. • Materials should work properly. • Materials and narration should be well-REHEARSED. • Piece should be • Engaging • Inventive • Of adequate complexity and interest • Without sentimentality

22. The Visual Dimension