Digital Poetry: A Poem Under Remix

Here I am, still working with a single poem, from draft to finish and beyond. This is not how I usually write. I am a quick, “I am done” kind of writer, who moves on to new things once the last thing is completed. I don’t suffer from attention deficit (I don’t think) but I am always in search of the next writing piece that will kick in that moment of creative excitement.

Working on the same poem for days on end … not my cup of tea. I am a little tired of this walk through the woods to get to the beach …

But here I am, moving into a remix stage of my piece about walking through the woods on the way to the ocean, a poem of place about Maine. I want to share two versions here, both of which use Webmaker’s Thimble site, and both are a little different in nature and experience.

Walk to the Beach remix

First, this remixed poem layers the text into four stanzas, with images for each stanza that shift when you hover the mouse over them. It’s not that dramatic a remix, to be frank, but I love the look and feel of this (which I remixed from a former poem from last year, which used a template that I remixed ….)

Head to the poem

Walk to the Beach remix

Second, I was thinking about how I could use the Blackout Poem idea (of using a sharpie to remove words from a text, leaving only a poem) and I wanted to do it with Thimble. I remixed yet another remix poem, in which the push of the button “drops” text out of view, leaving designated words behind. In this case, I tried to make a new poem living inside of the old poem.

(Note: This worked fine for me in Firefox but not in Chrome or Safari. Sorry. It has to do with the javascript being used in the code, I think.)

 Head to the poem

Peace (in the remix),
Kevin

2 Comments
  1. This is the craft of poetry versus the act of being poetic. It is why I so rarely call myself a poet. I, too, hate the roiling around in the mud of revision. It seems like so much changes, is lost, in the translation. Better the raw sensate and word than all the muck. But it is necessary most of the time. Poets/artists who claim that they got it all in one go are either liars or just like to play with their readers heads. Perhaps on occasion all the pieces fall into place in a single draft, but the reason for that is all the practice and discipline that has paved the way for that Muse. Plus, poetry needs ‘constructing’ in order to survive the centrifugal forces of the historical tides that ravage all our writings. Or so I thinks. It is why we have poetry with all of its weird limits. It is our medium for the ages. Attention must be paid. And that is why the investment you are making here is so valuable. It is valuable to yourself as you struggle with eternity; it is valuable to us as you model that struggle for all the rest of us. Good on ya. Bring the skill.

    Antispamitality: gills tug. The gill’s tug in the trout’s mind/as it tries to spit out the fly/so mercilessly barbed./Gasping for breath and poetry of water.

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