Comments on: PoetryFilter

PoetryFilter

UKnowForKids — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 18:56:43 -0800

"Exploring The Waste Land" is one of those sites that defines for me what the Internet should be. It utilizes the medium of the webpage to produce a result - an incredibly useful annotation of T. S. Eliot's masterpiece The Waste Land - that wouldn't work well at all on the printed page. [more inside]

By: inksyndicate

inksyndicate — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 18:59:18 -0800

Web design courtesy of Ted Nelson.

By: UKnowForKids

UKnowForKids — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:03:41 -0800

In a way, the site reminds me of Alan Moore's Watchmen - both works use their respective media (Internet and comics) to accomplish incredibly striking results that would be impossible to duplicate in, say, a printed scholarly annotation or a novel about vigilante crimefighters. Anyone know of other poetry annotation sites out there of this caliber? More generally, what other sites do you know of (present company excluded, of course) that are doing things with webpages that would have been almost inconceivable in the available media of fifteen years ago?

By: UKnowForKids

UKnowForKids — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:10:32 -0800

Oh, here's a link for the monitor-impaired.

By: konolia

konolia — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:13:59 -0800

Well, that page is about as confusing to me as the poem itself. I hate frames.

By: Jeff Howard

Jeff Howard — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:26:07 -0800

I think the concept is great. The execution however is pretty rough. The relationship of annotation to annotated material seems too unbalanced. A more sophisticated typographic treatment and color palette would help scale back the sense of overwhelming information. This is actually a pretty good use of frames, though some judicious DHTML could make them unnecessary.

By: MattD

MattD — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:55:04 -0800

Although I'd have to break out some of my critical editions (which, somehow, didn't quite get unpacked after my last move...) to validate the content, it appears to be a quite accurate and useful page. And, what's more, a labor of love, as nowhere is there any indication of Packer's scholarly affiliation. He doesn't even link to it from his home page!

By: BT

BT — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 19:57:12 -0800

I agree -- terrific concept, but (for example), the current design of the page reproduces one of the problems that typically confronts the reader of an intensely annotated poem in, say, a heavily footnoted text edition-- namely, that Eliot's lines are overwhelmed by the annotation and supplementary material. Not that there's anything wrong with that, for many readers. But surely there's a better balance than what we see here. That said, this looks like a rich linking-together of resources which would make this a very handy thing for anyone chasing down the various and sundry points of reference.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:10:26 -0800

impressive content. thanks for the link!

By: jonson

jonson — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:20:21 -0800

In a way, the site reminds me of Alan Moore's Watchmen Hey - funny you should mention that, there's a similar site (not nearly as well developed) where the subject IS Alan Moore's The Watchmen, in chapter by chapter notation format. I haven't looked at it in years, but a quick Google reveals it to still be live.

By: UKnowForKids

UKnowForKids — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:28:58 -0800

Yeah, jonson, that was a fun site to find when I had just finished reading Watchmen for the first time. (There's also a really useful Sandman annotation hosted at the same site. Also good: Swamp Thing annotations.)

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 20:33:23 -0800

Well posted, UKnow!

By: adrober

adrober — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 21:57:49 -0800

I really enjoyed that link... I plan to visit it often. Thanks!

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Sun, 26 Jan 2003 22:36:58 -0800

now if there were only one for Gravity's Rainbow...

By: emf

emf — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 02:17:30 -0800

Thanks for the link. On the poem itself, I say that Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look ought to be - Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a look Heresy, I know, but I think Straight throws off the metre and detracts from the strength of the line.

By: three|

three| — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 04:09:45 -0800

sweet jesus, the pink, the pink. WHY? its not 1998 anymore, why are we still designing that way? ~fin

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 05:29:23 -0800

The layout and workings of the page seemed to me like being hit in the head three times with a hammer - and the aesthetic design was like the hammer being followed by a poke in the eye. I would have presented the poetry text with hyperlinks to anything I wanted to explain or annotate. The explanations would appear in a pop-up or new window.

By: Summer

Summer — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 05:48:28 -0800

I find as I get older I become more of the opinion that The Wasteland is a load of pretentious old twaddle.

By: four panels

four panels — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 05:59:37 -0800

More fun with Ezra Pound's Canto LXXXI.

By: syzygy

syzygy — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 06:03:51 -0800

Very nice. Not pretty. Pretty useful, nonetheless. I might take out the frames and spruce it up a little, but I would leave the functionality alone... In a somewhat similar vein: Bulgakov's Master and Margarita.

By: UKnowForKids

UKnowForKids — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 06:04:42 -0800

Summer: I find as I get older I become more of the opinion that The Wasteland is a load of pretentious old twaddle. Well, it's no Four Quartets, that's for sure. But I still like it.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 06:16:03 -0800

now if there were only one for Gravity's Rainbow... They'd have to pry my laptop from my cold, dead hands.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 08:51:37 -0800

Thanks Uknow, great link - I will have fun with this. Also, what Jeff Howard and other said about the frames, but great & useful link nonetheless...a keeper!

By: RKB

RKB — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 10:05:53 -0800

If ever a book begged for something like this, it would be Nabokov's Pale Fire. Spent so much time flipping back and forth between the poem and the "annotation," I practically broke the spine of the book. Great link(s), Uknow.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 10:16:07 -0800

syzygy: The Bulgakov site is fantastic—when I saw "Maps" my eyes lit up, I clicked on the "Evil Apartment" and saw it clearly marked on a period-appropriate map of Moscow, thought "This is great—but it would be even better if you could click on the map and get a close-up"... then I clicked on the map and got a close-up! And the timeline, and the themes... A brilliantly done site. Many thanks!

By: 111

111 — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 11:56:59 -0800

Well, the color choice is completely alien to the poem's feel and content, but it's still a great idea. UKnow is absolutely right when he points the Web as the best medium for both annotation and reference. Regarding Alan Moore, all of his major comic series would profit from an annotated version: see, for instance, his own commentary to the printed version of "From Hell". Moore's scripts are said to be obsessively detailed down to characters' physical traits, the panels' backgrounds etc, and most of these details bear some relation to the events of the main story being. Jorn "robotwisdom" Barger has been working on a shorter annotated "Finnegans Wake" almost as mindboggling as Joyce's book.

By: 111

111 — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 11:58:34 -0800

main story being told

By: moss

moss — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 14:19:48 -0800

One of my favorite uses of the web ever is the collection of classical texts at the Perseus Digital Library. (To jump straight to an example of the wonderfulness, see, for example, Antigone.) Texts, translations, definitions and morphological analyses of every word, cross-references, and commentary. And a yummy little hypertext interface to it all.

By: Irontom

Irontom — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 14:48:26 -0800

Summer - That was my reaction to it when I first read it when I was 15. I've read it repeatedly since then, and my opinion has never changed.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 15:15:27 -0800

oh c'mon, summer + irontom - this is pretty damn good just from a "technical" pov (rhythm/sound), ignoring all the references and associated twaddle. i remember reading this thing first in a book i picked up cheap somewhere and not understanding half of it, but still thinking it wonderful. anyways, as a bunch of other people have said, it looks terrible and works like a dream. every spare moment i've had at work i've been following links; this evening i read the whole poem through, trying to include the odd link without losing the rhythm, and it still worked. it's making me think that beautiful is over-rated. on a more technical level, i (maybe alone here, amongst the wiser(r)) can't see how to re-implement this in a robust way without a pile more data being transmitted. any suggestions?

By: mattpfeff

mattpfeff — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 16:22:34 -0800

There's also an old, abandoned (and far more modest) attempt at hyperlinking "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" here.

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Mon, 27 Jan 2003 20:08:06 -0800

Two more annotated Prufrocks.

By: Summer

Summer — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 03:31:23 -0800

Andrew - I used to adore it. In fact I knew it off by heart when I was studying for my Oxford entrance exams. One of the questions was actually 'Do you think it is necessary to understand the meaning of a poem to appreciate it?' In the case of the Wasteland I think no. I've waded through the various references many times. I know what the Starnbergersee is. I know what the cockney women are talking about. I've been to King William St. It adds nothing. The meaning is utterly irrelevant to everyone but Eliot himself. For example, from the annotations: There have been several suggestions to the significance of the name Stetson. Stetson was the name of a co-worker at the bank at which Eliot worked. However, Eliot's friends saw this as a reference to Eliot's American friend, Ezra Pound. The name may stand for "everyman"; a less common verson of Smith or Jones. You see, you can never really know what it's about. What's the point in writing in Greek or Italian instead of English? There is none. It's just a snobbish affectation. It makes adolescent Eliot fans feel very intelligent though.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 13:04:38 -0800

Summer: It must feel good to know more about poetry than Eliot (or Pound, or the many other poets who have gotten a great deal from "The Waste Land"). You don't think maybe there's a slight chance you're just rebelling against something you had to learn for your Oxford entrance exams?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Tue, 28 Jan 2003 16:27:41 -0800

summer, but what does that have to do with whether the poem is good or not? i read it when i knew nothing about eliot - or poetry - and it still felt good (as you agree, i think). maybe i'm misunderstanding you, and you're not actually criticising the poem, just saying the meaning is irrelevant? if so, fair enough (it's kind of fun finding out, though). ps. imho the hollow men is even better (yes, i was a teenager when i read it). and this will surely make you either laugh or wince.

By: Summer

Summer — Wed, 29 Jan 2003 04:15:10 -0800

It must feel good to know more about poetry than Eliot (or Pound, or the many other poets who have gotten a great deal from "The Waste Land"). I don't believe in respecting something just because other people do. Anyway where did I say I knew more about poetry than Eliot, or even imply it? I'm saying that the poem's meaning, which may or may not have been completely clear to Eliot, adds little for his audience. you're not actually criticising the poem, just saying the meaning is irrelevant? I'm doing both, perhaps not as eloquently as I'd like. I found the Wasteland impressive when I first read it, but having studied Eliot a lot at university, I've come to know the tricks he uses with timing and language, and he uses them a lot. I just don't rate him as highly as I used to.