Poetic Acts & New Media, (Paperback)

Poetic Acts & New Media advances the fields of literary and new media studies by clarifying boundaries between competing genres and media through the creation of a new artistic genre, "media poetry." This aesthetic mode of expression/becoming seeks to transform mass culture (our codes of communication) by self-consciously acknowledging how textual, audio, and/or visual signs are constructed according to their simulation and not their representation.

This study draws heavily upon literary media theories that intersect with Gilles Deleuze's philosophy of 'Sense' as a simulated power of sensory transformations. Media poetry becomes a complex power of 'Sense' by blending conventional mass-media codes with poetic simulations that provide alternative forms of creating meaning.

Poetic Acts & New Media specifically examines the works of several poets that exemplify this multi-sensory approach to printed-text poetry, especially:
-Langston Hughes
-Tony Medina
-David Wojahn
-John Kinsella
-David Trinidad.

It also analyzes several contemporary films that embody the multi-modal logic of media poetry:
-David Lynch's Mullholland Drive
-Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky
-Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich.

In addition, this study interprets two influential primetime TV shows as exemplars of media poetry: Twin Peaks and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All media poetry, regardless of genre or medium, allows readers/viewers to envision "reality production" as a rewriteable and poetic enterprise that can productively remediate any transparent abstraction or common-sense realism.