Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995

In this book, the author, Chris Funkhouser provides a comprehensive historical, descriptive, and technical account of early works of computer-assisted poetry composition. Focusing on examples of digital poetry before the world wide web rather than on literary precursors to web experiments. Funkhouser demonstrates how technological constraints that would seemingly limit the aesthetics of poetry have instead extended and enriched poetic discourse. As a history of early digital poetry and a record of an era that has passed, this study aspires both to influence poets working today and to highlight what the future of digital poetry may hold. The book is divided into five different sections: origination, visual and kinetic design poems, hypertext and hypermedia, alternative arrangements and techniques enabled.