Winding up the computer poetry theme, here’s a poem suggested by Salima Virani

        (From Betting on the Muse - Poems and Stories
         Black Sparrow Press, 1996.)

I know we’ve just had a poem by Bukowski, but I was specifically on the lookout for something on the role of computers in the creative process, and when Salima sent me today’s wonderful little piece, I knew I had to run it. The light, perfectly balanced verse captures very well, the fluidity, almost I could say the liberation, that the computer affords the wordsmith - nothing is permanent unless you want it to be¹, erasing a word, a line, an entire poem is no harder than a click of a button.

Words on paper have a definite inertia to them - the crossed out lines track their way indelibly across the sheet, a visible and increasingly messy record of a work’s revision history. Contrast the aesthetic freedom of

                          no
         paper, no sound, no
         fury, no placenta
         and then
         just a clean screen
         awaits you.

And the poem itself definitely reflects that freedom, the lines pouring forth with careless abandon until they reach a hilariously antipoetic conclusion that made me laugh out loud. A fitting ending to the theme, I think. Ha, ha, ha. Ha.

— Martin