One hesitates to wax too enthusiastic about a medium which at present spends most of its time clicking, humming, and freezing up, yet, when the equipment does work, the new electronic world looks more exciting than, say, first looking into Chapman's Homer OR discovering an ocean. The new technologies will fundamentally change how human beings perceive art in general, and perhaps poetry in particular, since poetry's short bursts of highly concentrated words uniquely lends itself to a screen format. These screens play Joe Poet's new book of poems, a thirty minute program on CD Rom. Joe's collaborator, Sid, has composed an accompanying thirty minute piece of music. A program randomly selects the poems within the book, so the experience of watching is different each time.
Poems flash on over drawings, paintings, animated clips and quick movies.
Sometimes we hear Joe's voice reading one of the poems. Some patrons of the coffee house watch attentively, some tune in and out. Unlike a human being, the program never gets addled over a dropped cup or loud laughter. I don't doubt that Homer would have used quick movies if he could have. Not such a long time in the scheme of things.