How to carry the Nineteenth into the Twenty-first – a selection of poems
Location
SU-214
Department
English
Abstract
HOW TO CARRY THE NINETEENTH INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST – A SELECTION OF POEMS Timothy Garrison Department of English, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL 60625 This selection is part of a larger poetic series that explores the intersections of the human and the engine–specifically, the difference engine and all its subsequent manifestations, whether software or hardware, down to the unseen computing models within the artificial intelligences of our current age. Our lives are increasingly governed by these models, and the pace of change seems impossible to track. For those of us whose study of literature narrows its focus to any age other than the contemporary, our subjects of study may seem more and more quaint and distant with each passing day. However, we can take inspiration from the fact that nineteenth-century writers had their own baffling transitions to confront: the characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables manage centuries-old religious and racist strife about as well as they receive the incipient promise of photography and the thrilling speed of the earliest passenger railcars, but Walt Whitman kept writing in spite of–and in response to–the horrors of war. How do we poets today meet the poets of an earlier age, such as the nineteenth century? If we could speak with the ghost of Walt Whitman, the journalist-poet and war nurse, would he more likely engage with the topic of today’s wars or be too distracted by the fact that I can walk the Brooklyn Bridge while recording my own voice reciting his poetry about crossing into Brooklyn by ferry? In this selection I explore this speculation and others by bringing Whitman and other nineteenth-century poets into the lived experience of the twenty-first century, with all its doom-scrolling insomnia, its rapid-fire publishing capacity, and its frank welcome of digital intrusions into the most intimate aspects of our relationships.
Faculty Sponsor
Olivia Cronk
How to carry the Nineteenth into the Twenty-first – a selection of poems
SU-214
HOW TO CARRY THE NINETEENTH INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST – A SELECTION OF POEMS Timothy Garrison Department of English, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, IL 60625 This selection is part of a larger poetic series that explores the intersections of the human and the engine–specifically, the difference engine and all its subsequent manifestations, whether software or hardware, down to the unseen computing models within the artificial intelligences of our current age. Our lives are increasingly governed by these models, and the pace of change seems impossible to track. For those of us whose study of literature narrows its focus to any age other than the contemporary, our subjects of study may seem more and more quaint and distant with each passing day. However, we can take inspiration from the fact that nineteenth-century writers had their own baffling transitions to confront: the characters in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables manage centuries-old religious and racist strife about as well as they receive the incipient promise of photography and the thrilling speed of the earliest passenger railcars, but Walt Whitman kept writing in spite of–and in response to–the horrors of war. How do we poets today meet the poets of an earlier age, such as the nineteenth century? If we could speak with the ghost of Walt Whitman, the journalist-poet and war nurse, would he more likely engage with the topic of today’s wars or be too distracted by the fact that I can walk the Brooklyn Bridge while recording my own voice reciting his poetry about crossing into Brooklyn by ferry? In this selection I explore this speculation and others by bringing Whitman and other nineteenth-century poets into the lived experience of the twenty-first century, with all its doom-scrolling insomnia, its rapid-fire publishing capacity, and its frank welcome of digital intrusions into the most intimate aspects of our relationships.