"The Wondrous Works of Man": Technology as a Tool for Inspiration

Here at Paradise Tossed, we explore the intersection of poetry and technology. Typically we offer up resources for poets and others interested in the poetry, and of late we have been examining the ways in which technology has changed the way we read, write, and view poetry. Today, I’d like to take a look at the ultimate intersection and investigate the way in which technology provides inspiration for poetry. Just how does technology influence what we write about?

I started thinking about this idea after coming across the essay “‘Destiny uncovered when we double click’: Poems about Technology,” by Terri Kimiko Oda. In this essay, Oda describes and provides examples of five categories of tech poetry: novelty, political, change, faith, and connectivity. The essay is interesting and makes some good points, but I notice that it focuses primarily on the technology of the Internet. Certainly there are other technologies out there worth writing about. Indeed, a few can be found at Fantastic Poetry, and many science fiction magazines publish poems in which science and technology are featured.

What strikes me most, I think, about the websites I linked to above is that both agree on the point that this poetry is fundamentally the same as all other poetry written throughout history; the subject matter may deal with technology, but the themes are the themes of life. “What do people write about when they write poetry about technology?” asks Oda, and then she answers her own question, saying “[t]hey write about the same sorts of things that people write about when not referring to technology: Love, oppression, faith...” Adam Rulli-Gibbs, the author of the Fantastic Poems website further states:

Science fiction is not about automatic cars, personal jetpacks, robots, spaceships, space travel or little green men even if these do make an appearance.

Poetry is not about daffodils, full moons or navel contemplation even if these do make an appearance.

Science fiction or fantasy poetry, as each of the above, should, whatever appears within it, be about people and their perceptions.

The advent of electronics in the 20th Century seems to have changed our perception of technology, and this has become even more noticeable in the global culture of the 21st Century, where high technology is ubiquitous, but technology is nothing more than our name for those objects we put to use for practical purposes. As a species, we have been inventors for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, since our ancestors first chipped away at stones to create rudimentary knives, axes, and arrowheads, and poetry about or including such things has existed as long as poetry itself. Indeed, Homer wrote about “the wondrous works of man” and Tennyson “dipt into the future” and wrote of aeronautics in “Locksley Hall.” These examples, however, are not about technology; they are about human nature. Humankind’s inventions have not changed the soul of poetry, nor will they; they change only its face. As technologies change, so do the specific topics of our poems, but the themes remain the same.