Magnet Poetry on a Virtual Fridge

My fridge is currently covered with two Magnetic Poetry sets. My roommate and I are constantly updating the arrangements throughout the day, and whenever anyone comes to our house they put their two cents in. It's a nice way for us all to interact nonverbally. Every time I go for a glass of water I'm surprised by a new combination.

It's crossed my mind more than once that I'd really like all of the poets on the internet to be able to participate in this kind of silent collaboration. As I've talked about before, the iPhone app Touch Poet allows us to make our own 'magnetic poetry' and post it to social networks. But with an interface like that, we don't get to work from the same pool of words.

Technological Literacy: The Most Important Gift We Can Give to Children

Few things are as inspiring as watching a kid soak up information. They can process new ideas and concepts at a staggering velocity. From a young age, the children of the world are bombarded with things to learn. These learning experiences come from a wide range of sources: for starters there's the education system itself, the ubiquitous advertising industry, and the unparalleled influence of parents. Despite the positive or negative influence of these large-scale educational efforts, there's a much deeper education going on behind the scenes. Both implicitly and explicitly, kids learn on their own, and they teach each other what they know.

For the better part of the last three decades, that's the main way kids have learned about technology. Like sex education in the 1950s, technology in the 80s and 90s was a subject most parents hardly ever broached with their children, and was only taught in schools in the most broad, generic terms.

The Poetry Foundation Tells Us All to Take a Walk

To start us off, I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, even those of you who do not live in the US. Regardless of whether or not you celebrated the holiday, I hope you took the time, like I did, to listen to the stories, jokes, and perhaps even poems of your friends and family.


Now that we're all back and refreshed from this most gustatory of celebrations, I'm sure we could all use a nice long walk to get rid of those extra pounds. Well, our friends at The Poetry Foundation have us covered.  They've recently kicked off an exciting new walking tours project in both DC and Chicago.

Comic Weighs in on the Debate Over Reading Online

Do prefer to read real, physical paperbound books over electronic devices? Or are you one of the Kindle, iPhone, or even laptop reading converts? Debate over whether or not ebooks provide a satisfying reading experience has been going on for years, long before the Amazon Kindle ever debuted. But with the popularity of modern ebook readers, the discussion around this topic has exploded.

5 Places for Augmented Reality Poetry [US Edition]

Yesterday on Read Write Web, Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a great article on the limitations of and obstacles to the emerging technology known as Augmented Reality. He explains it much better than I do, but in a nutshell Augmented Reality consists of lifting up your smart phone when you're in a particular place to see information from the internet imposed over the image of the place where you're standing.

Despite the barriers Kirkpatrick outlines, some Augmented Reality technologies already exist, most notably the much-heralded iPhone app Layar. With this in mind, I was thinking about the best places for an Augmented Reality poem to appear. Wouldn't it be great to lift up your phone and be able to read, or hear recited, a poem that was written about that spot? For today and tomorrow, I've compiled a list of the ten places that would do well to include an Augmented Reality poem or two: five in the US and five in Europe. Here are the five American locations:

1. The Place: The Lincoln Memorial
The Poem: Walt Whitman's "O Captain! My Captain!"

Every time I go the Lincoln Memorial, I make it a point to read both the Gettyburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural, which are engraved on the memorial's walls. Wouldn't it be nice to have this poem, which captures the sense of loss due to Lincoln's assassination, as well?

"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won..."

2. The Place: The Grand Canyon
The Poem: Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning"

Though this poem wasn't written for the Grand Canyon specifically [it was originally composed for Clinton's first inauguration], its exhortation of "the rock, the river, the tree" makes it the perfect companion to one of our country's most stunning natural landmarks.

"But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow."

3. The Place: Salem, Massachusetts
The Poem: Anne Bradstreet's "Verses Upon the Burning of Our House"

From one of the earliest American poets, Anne Bradstreet's touching account of the destruction of her family's home perfectly encapsulates the best of the Puritan sensibility. Anne Bradstreet was the wife of a Massachusetts Bay Colony governor, so Salem is the place where the house most likely stood and provides a simulation of the kind of sites Bradstreet would have seen daily.

"And, when I could no longer look,
I blest his Name that gave and took,
That layd my goods now in the dust:
Yea so it was, and so 'twas just."

4. The Place: Every supermarket in the state of California
The Poem: Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"

"Howl" gets most of the attention, but this excellent poem by one of the great Beats was published at the same time. Ginsberg imagines himself following Walt Whitman around a grocery store, and it would be a great experience for poetry fans to walk along the aisles with the two of them.

"We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier."

5. The Place: Walden Pond
The Poem: Henry David Thoreau's Walden

Yes, Walden is not technically a poem in the traditional sense, but this Augmented Reality experience would be too good not to include on this list. Imagine walking around Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond while calling up the author's exhaustive notes and meditations on the surroundings. Perhaps Thoreau himself would be displeased by the interference of technology at his sanctuary, but for Thoreau's readers and fans the addition would be a delight.

"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."

There are hundreds more places in America for Augmented Reality poems like this. What do you think would be some good ones? Respond in the comments or send your suggestions to Twitter. And be sure to check back tomorrow for five more locations across Europe and their accompanying poems.

The Lit Mag Goes Mobile: "Electric Literature" Debuts Short Fiction for Your iPhone

In lieu of a longer reflection today, I'd like to draw your attention to some big news for poetry and lit, the mobile web, and this blog: Electric Literature has announced the creation of a bi-monthly electronic literary magazine.

The big news is that Electric Literature will be the first lit mag to be published to the iPhone, but I think the real gem here is that the publication will cross a number of media: there will be print, e-book [with a Kindle version specifically as well], and iPhone versions, with different pricing to subscribe to different versions of the mag.

This kind of cross-platform innovation really captures the zeitgeist of the literary world right now, which is why they're able to attract big name authors like Michael Cunningham. They lay out their whole raison d'etre in the About section of their site. [This is where they also, unfortunately, assert that the project will only include short fiction, at least for now. Here at PT we'll keep our fingers crossed for a poetry equivalent to come along soon!]

The makers of Electric Literature seem pretty confident that this is the direction most publications will be moving in the future, and I tend to agree, especially since they include the [albeit, more expensive] option of a print version. What do you think? Is this a portent of a mobile lit movement to come? Sound off in the comments.