How Transient Text in Digital Poetry can Function as a Means to Augment and Alter Meaning

Digital poetry offers a unique platform to express different meanings in text. The poem I will be discussing is Faith, which as the author Robert Kendall initially describes before the poem begins is “An expanding multi-verse in 5 movements.” (Kendall, 2002) Faith is a digital poem that relies heavily on transient text , relying on very little user input in order to gradually reveal words in various shades of warm colours, however the movement itself is not calm or elegant, but segmented and sporadic with words falling, often on top of each other, and in the end all of the words have merged together and they otherwise have no visible meaning other than ‘faith’ trumps all.

Unlike traditional poetry, Faith implores the reader to ‘watch’ the poem unfold, in order to witness the sequences and the arrangement of words, and because of this, the significance of the poem itself might be entirely subjective to the order of which each individual word is read and absorbed. From beginning until the end of the poem, the title “Faith” plays an important part, in the beginning the word “logic” is seen tumbling clumsily and repeatedly over the title, whereas the title word “Faith” remains completely unmoved, it appears to be a fixture almost and is hinted at in the first phrase “Logic can’t bend this” (Kendall, 2002).

Faith is a prime example of digital poetry utilizing programming to transform words and the arrangement of text in a way which would mean the loss of all meaning and aesthetic value if it was simply a traditional poem. For example, Faith uses action words to mimic the actions they are representing in a physical, and visible way that removes any need, on the reader’s behalf, to consider these meanings for themselves. One particular example with the word “winking”, the word itself, based on the simple mechanics of the poem, blinks in and out of existence before finally reserving its space on the white page, likewise the word “button” looks as though it is being “pressed” down several times and the combination of words such as “leave taking”, and “forgoing going gone” fade out, but not completely out of view which implies they are still relevant and still a part of the greater text, it is almost as if the words themselves are acting out their literal meanings and bringing themselves to life.

These types of words featured in Faith, including words that shift throughout, typically stand out more than other parts of text which do not move, implying that the true meaning within the poem is not necessarily the text itself but how the text functions and interacts with itself. Finally the conclusion presents itself in a unique way in which the title of the poem is what concludes it, falling onto and ultimately crushing the remaining words on the screen, which reiterates the sense of faith being the ultimate power and the only part of the text that has any kind of significant meaning and it is through movement that this is achieved.