Poets Inspired by Technology?

dejetal asks: "Does anyone know of a poet who's typical topic is some form of technology? I have been personally interested in this subject for some time now (with disappointing search results), but now I have some new motivation: I will be attending Columbia University fairly soon, and I would like to have an interesting topic to work on for a writing/composition course. Columbia also has some exciting new majors that may appeal to the Slashdot crowd, one of them being Digital Media Technology , the area of study that I wish to enter. Can anybody point me towards some good techno-poets?"

Comments

perl poets

[neillewis]

There is a thriving perl poetry community.

Mostly anti-tech

[RobotWisdom]

I can't really imagine a serious poem about tech unless it's anti-tech. For light verse, John Updike no doubt has some things, and there's Nabokov's "The Refrigerator Awakes" [RealAudio]. (In the realm of song lyrics, They Might Be Giants is another likely source.)

Paul Durcan's "Christmas Day" (not online) has a comment that could be Slashdot's motto:

Why do computer programmers always answer
When asked in questionnaires
In Sunday newspapers
What is your idea of Heaven? -
Snorkelling in Acapulco.

Pope Leo XIII wrote a Latin piece on photography in 1867: [translation]

O miracle of human thought,
O art with newest marvels fraught...

Some gleanings from my weblog: landing-gear crisis, Chuck-E-Cheese, auto repair

Luis de Camoes

[SAN1701]

Considered the great portuguese poet ever, his most important work, "Os Lusiadas", is a story about the Portuguese explorations of the seas since 1400, and their achivements (like, discovering the route to India, "discovering" Madagascar, etc.). Since they were dealing with the highest technology of their time, I think it qualifies as an important poem inspired by technology.

"Os Lusiadas" is mandatory reading in many high schools in Brazil and Portugal. Some links:

http://web.rccn.net/Camoes/
http://lusiadas.gertrudes.com/

Lawrence Lerner, RACTER, Momus

[metamatic]

I'm assuming you mean published "name brand" poets, rather than Anonymous Cowards... I suspect I'm gonna be the only person posting anything useful here, but it just so happens that you've touched on a favorite obsession of mine: why aren't there more poets dealing with actual modern life?

Anyway, a few pointers:

You'll probably have trouble finding them, but Lawrence Lerner wrote two books of computer-inspired poems. The first was "A.R.T.H.U.R.: The Life and Opinions of a Digital Computer". UMass Press, ISBN 0-87023-181-2.

ARTHUR is a dim-witted AI (the poems were written in the early 70s). The poems are humorous, but at the same time some of them are quite chilling. I forget the title of his second ARTHUR book; I never managed to track down a copy.

The other obvious answer is "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed" by RACTER, aka William Chamberlain and Thomas Etter. RACTER was the psychotic cousin of ELIZA, and Chamberlain and Etter used it to create programs which would output demented prose and poetry.

Something I've often pondered is the feasibility of building a reverse-engineered INRAC clone under the GPL, so RACTER could live again. (Apparently the original authors lost the BASIC source code some years ago.)

If you include song lyrics as poetry, you have to check out recent albums by Momus. He's the only songwriter I'm aware of dealing with technological subjects in an intelligent and witty fashion. "Virtual Valerie" (from "The Philosophy of Momus") is the best song I've ever heard about long-distance relationships via Internet, and "Finnegan The Folk Hero" is a hilarious pastiche of country music that'll strike a nerve with any web developer.

Science Fiction Poetry

[eddy the lip]

The first that springs to mind is Ray Bradbury. He's published at least two volumes of poetry with wide ranging subject matter (rather like his fiction, for that mattter). It's not necessarily to everyone's taste in the same sense that his short stories may not be; that is, he's obviously having fun and they're extremely un-pretentious. I enjoyed them.

While I was googling for another name (which I unfortunately couldn't find), I discovered that both Ursula K. LeGuin and Thomas Disch have published poetry. Not sure how technology oriented any of it is. I think I'll be looking for some of it though, especially Disch.

Finally, you may want to check out the Rhysling Awards (also a collection) and Star*Line, the newsletter of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.