"The River Dart" & "Babble Brook" by J.R. Carpenter
This poetic performance on Twitter is a series of observations focused on the Dart river and its environs in Devon, England. The earliest tweets on this account, which started on November 19, 2009, focused on the practicalities of walking along the river, and rapidly settled into a language based study of the river and its environs. The tweets exhibit a curious mixture of subjective and objective perceptions, writing from a very personal perspective without falling into Romanticism. It is more like Olson’s dictum that “ONE PERCEPTION MUST IMMEDIATELY AND DIRECTLY LEAD TO A FURTHER PERCEPTION,” but captured and delivered over time via Twitter.
The River Dart’s Twitter stream flows also into a Facebook account named Babble Brook (see the announcement below).
“Babble Brook” itself flows from a larger project, “Tributaries & Text-Fed Streams: A Feed-Reading of The Capliano Review” a Web 2.0 engagement of a special issue of that journal.
The central metaphor is that of flowing rivers and language: streams of consciousness captured in strings of words gathering into larger flows, which branch off into tributaries and travel visibly over the land and disappear into the sea currents of the unconscious. Whether we’re aware of them or not, ideas expressed and released into the networks of human communication, creating ripples, currents, and affecting humanity’s cognitive climate.
Carpenter activates these metaphors in many of her works, embedding ancient textual currents as marquees, shaping endless variability into generative streams of text, and this idea is at the heart of “The River Dart.” A tidal river, the Dart doesn’t simply flow in one direction— out from Carpenter’s mind— and just as the tides push back against the current, so does the context of the river and its seasonal rhythms blend into her writing. A single poetic articulation wouldn’t do justice to the ebb and flow of these ideas: they require serial expression.
And by doing so in social media platforms, we can allow them to flow into our Twitter and/or Facebook streams, refreshing the quotidian with a little poetry.
“Know Poems” by Jason Edward Lewis, Bruno Nadeau, Christian Gratton, David Jhave Johnston, J.R. Carpenter, Jason Camlot, Jerome Fletcher, and Loss Pequeño Glazier.
The first version of the Know app was named after, designed for, and published a single poem: Lewis’ “Buzz Aldrin Doesn’t Know Any Better.” For version 2.0, he commissioned five poets to produce new poems with the authoring system. Here are some noteworthy observations on how they mapped out the app’s parameters.
- David Jhave Johnston went to two minimalist extremes: using single word lines to produce a legible sentence while limiting the effect of the touch interface to two words in “4 Pound” (depicted above), and by using touch to make words move on such wide orbits that they effectively disappear.
- J.R. Carpenter uses the structure to create a kind of semantic word cloud full of binary opposites in “Twinned Notions,” and in “up from the deep” conceptually maps the interface as a sea of words which the reader can pull maritime themed verse out into readability with touch and drag gestures.
- Jason Camlot’s “Debaucher’s Chivalric Villanelle” draws connections between the repetitive structure of the villanelle and the repetitions of lines that occur because of the challenges of having overlaid language that can be activated by touch.
- Jerome Fletcher’s “K Now” (depicted above) uses larger orbits for the words to move, creating space for legibility without needing to touch the screen, though touching any word brings out entire lines to the foreground for readers to better appreciate their sonorous approximations.
- Loss Pequeño Glazier’s colorful polyglot “What Dragonfly Doesn’t Savoir Faire” uses multiple colors to signal slightly different behavior from the orbiting words— the red ones remain in the foreground, but the blue ones rotate with the white ones, occasionally becoming obscured. He also provides different instructions for the drag function, subverting the expected response from the interface. (Note also that either the app or iOS are unable to recognize or reproduce the character for accented letters.)
The structure of a word cloud from which one can pull lines through touch is a remarkably versatile structure and it would benefit from a version that allows readers to explore it with their own texts and controls, as they did with the Speak app.
“Speak Poems” by Jason Edward Lewis, Bruno Nadeau, Jim Andrews, David Jhave Johnston, J.R. Carpenter, and Aya Karpinska This suite of poems by several prominent writers in the e-lit community was written using the Speak app, an authoring system developed by Lewis and Nadeau. This is the first in the P.o.E.M.M series (Poems for Excitable Mobile Media), a series of apps designed to explore the expressive, artistic, and publication potential of Apple’s iOS computational environment, Store, and touchscreen devices. The app opens to “What They Speak When They Speak to Me,” Lewis & Nadeau’s original touchscreen poem for large installations. The app offers other poems as well as the option for readers to explore the system by entering texts. Considering the effort that goes into creating computational frameworks for e-lit works, it is a great idea to open them up for further writerly interventions. It is therefore worthwhile to see what four talented writers have done and how their own poetics and thematic concerns are expressed through this framework. The main observable variables are font and lines of text, which readers access in different portions and sequences. In “Character,”Jim Andrews writes meta textual lines from the personified poem’s voice that focus the reader’s attention on the interface. Jhave’s “Let Me Tell You What Happened” reveals fragments of a situation that most people would find difficult to speak about. Carpenter juxtaposes two very different conceptual frames evoked by her poem’s title, “Muddy Mouth.” Karpinska’s “The Color of Your Hair Is Dangerous” explores linguistic slippages resulting from speaking multiple languages. It is worth noting that all five poets (including Lewis) engage the theme of speech, structuring their lines to allow readers to intuit their structure. They help map out the framework’s rhetorical potential.
"Notes on the Voyage of Owl and Girl" by J.R. Carpenter
This generative work produces narratives about a mythical sea voyage undertaken by two characters, an owl and a girl. Framed over the gorgeous image an old sea map, each iteration of the story unfolds in a text that lasts 40 seconds before being generated anew, which is sufficient time for most readers to get to the end, but without being distracted by links. Readers that follow links to the shifting islands found in Wikipedia to get information about some of the story’s contexts are likely to return to a different story, in which the information gleaned may no longer be relevant. This disorientation resonates with the owl and girl’s journey, who aided by various navigational and communication technologies, travel beyond the edges of the known, leaving behind some incomplete records of their adventure.
As you read the stories— and I recommend reading multiple iterations to better appreciate its variations on the theme— keep an eye out for some of the textual undercurrents that slowly begin to manifest themselves in different parts of the map. A peek at the source code (right click on a non-image part of the screen and select view source) starting on line 129, reveals a series of five marquees (named “bay,” “rip,” “journal,” “wecoast,” and “morse”) each of which slowly reveals a poetic text, one line at a time. The only one without line breaks is the last one, displayed on the screen almost as the undulations of waves at sea, is actually a written in morse code:
- —- / —- .-. —. .- -. .. —.. . / .. … / - —- / .-. . -.-. —- —. -. .. —.. . —..— / - —- / -.- -. —- .— / - …. .- - / .. -. / .- -. / . -. -.. .-.. . … … / ..- -. -.- -. —- .— -. / … . .- / - ……-. . / .. … / —- -. . / .. … .-.. .- -. -.. / ..- .—. —- -. / .— …. .. -.-. …. / -.— —- ..- / …. .- …- . / … . - / ..-. —- —- - / -… . ..-. —- .-. .
I will not translate the encoded coda for this work, but you can copy and paste the sequence into a decoder, which will allow you to listen to it and read it in English. Its message leads to reflection upon the work as a whole that may lead to further exploration of its narrative geography.
The boundaries of this work are as leaky as some of the ships and cartographic knowledge of the seas referenced in this piece. In addition to the links to Wikipedia, most of the references for the images and marquees are credited in the notes, with the exception of coda referenced above, quoted from a work represented in the following URL: …. - - .—. —-… -..-. -..-. . -. .-.-.- .— .. -.- .. .—. . -.. .. .- .-.-.- —- .-. —. -..-. .— .. -.- .. -..-. -… —- .-. -.…-. .-.. .. -…-. … (encoded to avoid “spoiler” effect). There are flows from other works by Carpenter, such as a QR code in “The Broadside of a Yarn” that brings up a web page with the story generator. It also contains lines from her poem “up from the deep,” published in Jason Lewis’ iOS “Know” app.
She spins a sturdy yarn from these fibers.
"Whisper Wire" by J.R. Carpenter
This generative poem focuses on the dynamics of electronic communication, primarily analog wired and wireless technologies, such as telegraph, radio, and cassette tapes. There is abundant noise in these types of communication— static, crossed transmissions, echoes, and ghost signals— and for effective transmission to occur, both sender and receiver need to be proficient listeners. This is an apt metaphor for this poem, in which one can perceive there is a different signal to noise ratio from what we expect in print texts. In other words, some of the lines may not make sense, but others are crystal clear. Which lines are the carriers of Carpenter’s message?
One could contend that all the lines are intended because they are the result of signals sent through your computer’s software and hardware to produce what scrolls before you on the screen. What is the original message? The source code, which is a remix of Nick Montfort’s “Taroko Gorge” using modified variables (the first of the remixes to do so) and meticulously chosen data sets designed and tested to produce output that satisfies Carpenter’s vision for the poem. I recommend exploring the source code (right-click-> view source) to discover some of the raw materials she has assembled for this experience.
Then explore some of her other poems that use this code by following this link. J. R. Carpenter stands apart as the poet who has written the most works based on this code, making it respond to her own particular poetics.
"Gorge" by J.R. Carpenter
This poem takes an everyday activity, eating, and places in a generative engine that drives it into excess and absurdity. As the lines of this poem unfold, like rapidly served courses in an endless meal, one becomes increasingly aware of the bodily activities involved with ingestion, digestion, emesis, and egestion— frames of reference evoked by Carpenter’s chosen images and words.
One way in which she has repurposed the engine is by choosing appropriate (meaningful) words to fit the variables. For example, in the source code she maps the “above” variable with the following dataset:
appetite, brain, craving, desire, digestive juice, digestive tract, enzyme, gaze, glaze, gorge, gullet, head, incisor, intellect, jaw, knowledge, language, maw, mandible, mind, molar, muscle, mouth, nose, sight, smell, spit, sweat, spirit, thirst, throat
And “below” with the following:
aroma, bladder, blood vessel, bowl, bowel, crust, dip, dressing,film, gut, lip, lower lip, proffered finger, finger tip, flared nostril, flushed cheek, meal, membrane, morsel, most intimate odour, palm, persistent scent, pore, sauce, soft pocket, slightest sliver, stomach, surface, thick spread, tongue, taste bud, vein, vinaigrette
Has she mapped the above and below variables to upper and lower parts of the body or to mental and visceral reactions to food? There is some overlap in the use of body parts, but they combine effectively to produce eating narratives that are difficult to stomach. The first two lines in the screen capture above provide a clear example of a bodily process that can be the result of indigestion from overeating or bulimia. The variable names may remain the same, but they’ve been rethought, repurposed, digested for this piece.
J.R. Carpenter’s remix of “Taroko Gorge” is noteworthy for its own merits as a poem, and because it extended the poem’s potential and thematic range. If the first two created a duet, Carpenter’s voice turned it into a chorus, a structure much more welcoming for others to join in. Montfort created the original with its generative engine, Rettberg inverted its thematic and locative dimension, and Carpenter took it in a very different thematic direction, which opened the poem up to a multiplicity of thematic possibilities.
Also of note is Montfort’s positive acknowledgement of “Gorge” in his blog:
J.R.’s piece – one might call it a tract of sorts – is simply called Gorge. (Update: J.R. has a post discussing Gorge, too.) See if you can stomach it, and for how long.
Between the original, the remixes, and Montfort’s openness to having his work reimagined and repurposed, “Taroko Gorge” began its transformation into what could be labelled as a new poetic form. This blog will continue to explore its documented variants over the next few weeks.
“There he was, gone” by J. R. Carpenter.
This poem’s paradoxical title is a key to understanding its design and strategies. The subject’s presence and absence from a location is made possible through the passage of time, as the speakers search and imagine his whereabouts. The generated lines are structured to form a dialogue: a call and response that builds and recedes in length and intensity, like tides on the waters depicted in the map. A third or fourth voice (perhaps from the missing one) scrolls in from the background, becoming legible when it reaches enough contrast in the image. The scheduling of texts in this poem enhance the uncertainty of attempting to locate a moving target by keeping readers constantly reassessing what they’re reading.
The gorgeous map provides a sense of place while inviting readers to explore its surfaces.
"CityFish" by J. R. Carpenter
This poem is about displacement— a fish out of water story about a young woman named Lynne whose imposed migratory patterns are the opposite of what most people choose follow. Lynne’s adventures in New York City all draw attention to people, animals, and things displaced in time and place, the result of immigration, population shifts, fishing, and family visits.
Placement and displacement are also part of the design of this multimedia work, which is arranged horizontally on a window that requires scrolling to navigate its 24,140 pixels (about 250 inches wide). As an HTML file from its very early implementation, it is essentially a collage of images, texts, videos, maps, drawings, and links, all coming from different sources, all positioned (using the position:absolute tag) to produce a coherent work. The use of links and anchors are cleverly used to enhance the poem’s theme.
J. R. Carpenter’s works are tricky to place, genre-wise, because they fall somewhere between poetry and narrative, memoir and fiction. Her succinct prose is poetically focused on evoking character and place, shifting subtly from factual to lyric, prose poem and verse. At the same time, her use of maps, photographs, and videos lend veracity to works that are presented as fiction, as she did in “The Cape.”
They thrive in those shifting coastlines.
Note: This work is in the 2012 New Media Writing Prize shortlist. [Nov. 28, 2012]
"In Absentia" by J. R. Carpenter
This autobiographical narrative poem is mapped onto a Google satellite image of the Mile End neighborhood in Montreal, where J. R. Carpenter lived for 11 years. This lends the poem a sense of reality but from a physical distance, perhaps analogous to the speaker’s temporal distance from the neighborhood. And much like those satellite images are composed of multiple photographs taken at different times and combined to provide a clearer picture, this work has several writers, lending their voices in English and French as multiple perspectives on Mile End. The main voice belongs to Carpenter, whose previous work “Entre Ville” brought textures to life in this neighborhood.
Daily my dog and I walk through this interior city sniffing for stories. Poetry is not hard to find between these long lines of peeling-paint fences spray-painted with bright abstractions and draped with trailing vines. Cooking smells, laundry lines and alley cats criss-cross the alleyway one sentence at a time.
Williams Carlos Williams’ famous aphorism “no ideas but in things” resonated with his Imagist poetic roots in “A Sort of a Song” (listen to it in PennSound ), and echoed throughout his epic poem Paterson, adding a sense of place to his concept. J. R. Carpenter’s poem is organized around five ideas— “à louer” (for rent), “à vendre” (for sale), “perdu” (lost), “trouvé” (found), and “vide” (empty)— and they are grounded on things, places, and vignettes. As you read these short narratives and prose poems, you’ll gain a sense of how a decade lived in a neighborhood is as intimate a relationship as any.
"TRANS.MISSION [A Dialogue]" by J.R. Carpenter
This generative poem focuses our attention on several technologies used for transmitting and receiving messages, the perils of transatlantic crossings in the North Atlantic ocean, the missions sent to survey and map the land, and the need for communication to occur successfully across physical and historical distances. The poem is generated from 72 variables and a rich word data set for each (see lines 37-109 in the source code) to produce more versions than anyone should really need to calculate because the total number is beyond the scale of thorough human readability, as proven by Raymond Queneau in 1961. The trick is to “try again” and read multiple generated versions— which happens automatically every 80,000 miliseconds (about 1:33) or you can refresh the page— and intuit the ideas, structures, tensions, relations, and variations each version gestures towards.
J.R. Carpenter’s poem is very coherent, thriving in its permutations to reconfigure multiple human experiences, anxieties, needs for communication, and technologies across time and space.
