The [Very Loud] Voice from Nowhere: Anonymity and Poetry

Lewis Carroll. Moliere. Pablo Neruda. Toni Morrison. Mark Twain. Pseudonyms and literary pen names have been a part of the writing of poetry, fiction, and drama since the very beginning of writing itself. Most authors of Japanese haiku, for example, write under a haiga, or pen name. And the most famous name in Greek literature, Homer, is really a pseudonym that stands in for a collection of oral tradition, rather than a particular individual.

The literary world has always embraced authors who use pseudonyms, as demonstrated by the household names mentioned above. Poetry readers are very comfortable with anonymity, and it's no different on the Internet, where anonymity is a way of life for many.

There seems to be two schools of thought with Internet handles, screen names, and avatars. Either you use your real name, as many Twitter, FriendFeed, and Facebook users do, or you choose a nom-de-plume, like most AIM users and those who post on online forums. Some, like me, do a combination of the two. I use the handle "paradisetossed" on most sites, but my real name is readily available to those who view my profile. Others include part of their name, usually their first name, but don't give the entire thing. Despite the variation there are clearly two camps: the named users and the anonymous ones.

Online communities have become places where the anonymous have just as much say as those who use their real names. For the most part, this option for anonymity isn't abused, and people are becoming pretty comfortable with the idea of interacting with someone who hasn't disclosed their full identity. For poets, this idea is anything but new. Poetry can be a close interaction with an author who has been dead for hundreds of years, and whose name, real or imagined, is immaterial. What's the difference between reading Homer and the poetry on an anonymous blog?

In a tightly controlled publishing industry, poets and authors are allowed to write under pen names, but their real names are kept on record. A quick Google search will yield the real names of any of the authors listed above. The big difference with internet anonymity is that someday soon the most famous contemporary poet may have an undiscoverable real name. Someone who publishes a book anonymously, as Stephen King found out when he published under the name Richard Bachman, doesn't stay anonymous forever. But someone who posts anonymous poetry online today could very well stay anonymous forever.


A quick follow-up to last week's post on Iranian poetry. Yesterday NPR featured Iranian poet Parham Baghestani on its website for his poems and tweets about Iran's disputed election. What I especially like about the article is the side-by-side Persian and English translations.