Introduction Post: Digital Found Poetry

[primeideal]

 Hey, I'm primeideal and I'll be hosting a week on "digital found poetry." I'm not really crazy about this name, but I don't know what to call these various web sites I'll be writing about--to me they're all under the same umbrella, but it's hard to pin down how, exactly, to describe the umbrella.

 

Most of these can be considered some forms of "found poetry," which is a catch-all term to generally refer to language that's found in a context other than consciously-created poetry, that's later reinterpreted as poetic by some other person.

 

In general, I personally don't enjoy most found poetry. Or, put another way, I don't share the mindset that seems to lie behind some (though not all) found poetry--if there's a sort of self-imposed humility, a fear that being deliberate in picking one's own words is passe, or that it's cool and newfangled to "poetically" "interpret" someone else's text instead.

 

However, I do enjoy texts that correspond to formal constraints. And in this day and age, it's easier than ever to--not only have a large corpus of text to sort through--but to come up with automated ways of parsing it and pointing out various coincidences. So, throughout the week, I'll be looking at different ways people have used the social networking sites Twitter and/or Tumblr--as well as more old-fashioned sources, like the New York Times--to share snippets of interesting text. Coincidences and formal wordplay abound, but meaning is--as always--what you make of it.