These past tumultuous few decades, we have witnessed the rise of the personal computer, the rapid dispersal of the World Wide Web, and the emergence of whatever they’re calling this 4G wireless craziness now. Several different monikers have been applied to this time period – the computer age, the digital age, etc. – but the one that’s always captured my imagination the most is the information age, an apt name for a period that has seen such a dramatic proliferation of data. Long gone are the days of depending solely on such quaint resources as libraries, bookstores, TV, and radio for our information. For those of us lucky enough to have access to what is now fairly basic technology, we now have access to a huge universe of information sources in a wide variety of formats.
One trend that’s always fascinated me about this age is its effect on our reading patterns. 10-15 years ago, experts were already predicting some of the changes that have indeed begun to take place as a result of being alive in a world awash with data. Gone are the days when an individual’s ability to recall information was held in such high esteem (think of the Medieval monks in the pre-printing press days, whose ability to recall large amounts of tracts were invaluable to the preservation and furtherance of knowledge at the time). The paradigm is shifted. Information now is readily reproduced and easily stored. Our memories have been automated. What’s much more important now then simply recalling information is information literacy – i.e., how good we are at navigating and retrieving stored information. As a result, quantity has begun to replace quality, as people are focusing less on a slow analysis of the individual text and more on a rapid sort and search of huge waves of data.
All of this is a long-winded way of introducing a topic I’ve been wondering about – the effect of the information age on poetry. In so many ways, poetry is antithetical to the trends coming out of this age. For poetry to be effective, it requires a slow reading and absorption. It does its art on a word-by-word basis, with each individual piece composing an essential part of the completed effect. This is in contrast to current trends that encourage the rapid navigation of large amounts of information in order to comprehend the most essential parts.
This might all sound like a stretch of a point, but I do believe there’s something there. Overall, reading patterns have been changing the past couple of decades. Trends indicate the overall percentage of people reading books – and literature in particular – is steadily declining. Meanwhile, those people who are reading are more frequently turning to a digital environment and looking at multiple sources. I haven’t seen studies for this last point, but I’m also willing to bet that the art of scanning (as opposed to more focused reading) is on the rise. Personally, I know with all the articles or links I come across or are sent to me just during a normal working day that there’s no way I can read them all and still get any work done. And so I scan.
In a world that was already turning away from poetry, such trends can surely not help. As Ezra Pound famously said, “Concentration is the essence of poetry.” Controversial as Pound could be in many ways, he was on to something with this point. And though he was speaking of it primarily from the writer’s point of view, to fully appreciate and understand poetry, concentration and focus are required on the reader’s side as well. Why did the poet choose such-and-such a word? How does each word work together? Why break the line here? Why this structure? In everyday writing (that prosaic prose), analysis on such a small scale is not as essential – it’s certainly not a bad idea by any means, just not as essential.
Speaking of poetry in the information age is interesting because poetry, at its best, is not merely information. It’s attempting to communicate something beyond its surface meaning. As we steer more and more towards consumption of larger quantities of information, are we as a culture losing our ability to fully understand and analyze such deeper meanings in writing?
Or perhaps I’m simply reading too much into this.
Regardless, there always is the opposite viewpoint to consider. To those who read it, poetry offers a welcome respite from the data glut of the information age. Much as the subject matter in poems is often used to make the reader slow down and think about everyday things in a different light, the language of poetry is such as to bring the reader into a meaningful engagement with language. That same language that the reader slings around thoughtlessly in everyday life is suddenly reinvigorated with a deliberation and intensity that gives one pause. Poetry reminds us that language can be so much more than mere information; it can do wondrous and strange things. . . if only one takes the time necessary to concentrate on it.
Perhaps there isn’t much to all this. Long before the advent of computers, poetry had already been in a steady decline, and poets themselves have oftentimes appeared to even purposefully isolate themselves from a general readership (one thinks of certain Modernists). There does, however, seem to be some trends in the information age that are poised to hasten this decline. There will always be people who read poetry and are moved by the mysteries of its language, but is there even reason to hope that poetry will ever reverse its trends and achieve more than a small, specialized readership? The cards are stacked against it, at this point. Yet it will be interesting to see how poets and various organizations intent on just such a tide change attempt to stay relevant in a world seemingly intent on making it less so.
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