Innovative Poet-Programmers of the World Unite!

Review of Loss Pequeño Glazier. Digital Poetics: The Making of E-Poetries. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 2002.

By George Hartley

4. Reading Writing Coding

One of the most important components of Glazier's book is its insistence that Web-based textuality forces us to reconsider our assumptions about what is involved in the writing and reading of texts. One of the first things he points out is that the existence of the text itself as a Web document is due to a host of coded systems, all of which are different modes and procedures of writing. HTML, after all, is a type of writing. "For 'd'été' to have to appear as 'd'été' is no small matter" (110). Though Glazier suggests that the serious Web poet will write HTML from scratch, even Web-editor produced HTML documents are written. The browser itself is written code which interprets not only the HTML but also the language of the computer's operating system.

As readers, furthermore, we need to expand our sense of what constitutes the text. Glazier argues that all elements of the Web page are to be read. These elements include the title bar at the top of the browser, the status bar in the bottom corner, the page itself (text and images), the "alt" tag comments that show while images are loading, and the source code (visible by choosing the "View Source" option from the browser's menu bar). A page might need to be scrolled, which itself becomes a part of the reading. Several new browser windows might appear, a function of the text which complicates the notion of the Web page as simply being an electronic transmission of what could otherwise be a printed page. Font size and color might be variable, the words might move across the page or appear and disappear, images might function as part of the writing-all of these variables, most of which are not possible in print, become significant elements of the text, elements that signify.

"Code is a scene of poeisis," Glazier argues; consequently, "an informed view of coding does not emphasize adherence to rules but encourages the poet/programmer to invent, clone, adapt, or appropriate styles based on the writing's content and/or activity, that is, in relation to specific concerns present in the writing" (111).