-- to start in the middle . . .

For 12 years or so I've been concerned with electric literature. I'd like to see work with links that does what literature does -- that props revery, that torques thought, that creates of necessity something more than the sum of its parts.

I've tried to do this a lot of ways. I've learned some things, and I like what I've done (yes, and my mother claims to), but without any feeling that I've solved the problem, altogether.

I'd like to show a few things I've seen that seem to me to relate to the problems and opportunities of electric literature: hopefully somebody can straighten me out about some things.

One idea I play with is how visual elements in text change meaning, kind of like the music of speech changes meaning.

Tom Phillips' HUMUMENT is an 80's experiment with visual elements in print.

http://www.rosacordis.com/humument/

Johanna Drucker's THE WORD MADE FLESH (check the special collections at Dennison Library!)

Marinetti and the Italian Futurists did some interesting things (Google turns up 115,000 links).

Also, there was a movement called Poesia Concreta in the 1950's. Central people were Eugen Gomringer, Augusto de Campos, Haraldo de Campos and Ignacio Pignatari.

A great place to look for a lot of this stuff, and other experimental things too, is Ubu Web:

www.ubu.com/

An anthology that covers a lot of the poetic experiments of the last 100 years or so is the two-volume Poems for the Millenium.