John Cayley

John Cayley's literal art is completely captivating. He makes poetry both a visual experience and a sort of game, where the reader is responsible for discovering the code behind his seemingly arbitrary arrangement of letters. Language is completely reinterpreted in these works; writing becomes more the nature of language than a form of speech. The poem in the images above, "River Island", was my favorite of his works. The reader can control the organization of letters in order to make simple poems, as well as manipulate the images to produce sound. It is a true sensory experience playing with these poems, and redefines the art of literature. The reader must think not only about the words in front of him, but the reason why they they appear in the order, arrangement, and aesthetic appearance that they do.

This reminds me of a website I've been following for about a year called QuickMuse. The site invites renowned poets to write a poem on the spot, then plays the process in real time for the reader. As the site producers put it,

"QuickMuse is a cutting contest, a linguistic jam session, a series of on-the-fly compositions in which some great poets riff away on a randomly picked subject. It's an experiment, QuickMuse, to see if first thoughts are indeed the best ones. We're not entirely sure about this, but we suspect QuickMuse will bring readers closer to the moment of composition than they have ever been before. Best part: our "playback" feature lets you watch the poems unfold, second by second. Or as Thlyias Moss says, it's "the chance for a poem to find its/audience fast," in which words don't "have as much/time to stale, pale/lose the relevance of the moment" to which they belong."

The process is fascinating, because you're able to see authors add, delete, and move around phrases as they think of them. It's a great inspiration for aspiring poets as well as a marvel of recording technology.