Charles Bernstein’s prose and poetry contain clear political messages. For example, his first piece entitled “Electronic Pies in the Poetry Skies” unexpectedly turns readers’ thoughts toward democracy and freedom as malleable concepts particularly in relation to the Web. Bernstein attempts to lead readers to question the existence of democracy and freedom throughout history until the present. How wide is the space that has been created by technological languages for people? Bernstein claims that “Language reproduction technology… has a history of democratizing social space while at the same time not democratizing it enough”. Nevertheless, later, the writer prompts readers to wonder what can be “enough”, how freedom can exist within electronic spaces, and how much freedom there is. I believe that the writer is carefully leading us to recognize the politics behind everything, especially the politicization of electronic spaces. Since politics cannot be separate from economy, Bernstein emphasizes the capitalization of the Web and its pertaining to or limitation of freedom. The writer states: “our lives are neither free nor unlimited”. Bernstein stresses the connection between our real lives and the tools we use to free ourselves and to practice freedom. If our lives are not free, then the tools we are using to fill or enrich our lives are not free either – including the Web. Through his presentation of several concepts in “Electronic Pies in the Poetry Skies”, I interpret Bernstein as claiming that everything is connected to power and authority in one way or another. Even if we think that electronic spaces have given us more freedom, these spaces are invaded and controlled by people who have the capital – the power.

Mark Nowak’s Coal Mountain Elementary reminds me of Goldsmith’s writing style. However, the references pages at the end of Nowak’s book give a different sense of authority. While Goldsmith’s writing is built on plagiarizing from other sources in order to create differential texts, Nowak cites the sources which he depends on in his book. However, reading Nowak makes me confused about the way authorship can be identified. In other words, I believe that Nowak’s act of collecting materials about mining disasters (explosion, floods, fire) from a wide range of sources does not make him the author figure of his book. Thus, from reading Nowak, I ask: Does authorship matter when there is a humane message that is greater in importance than the author’s identification?

Nowak emphasizes issues of class and poverty and investigates the impacts of the coal mining industry on the lives of people who work in coal mines. Interestingly, Nowak brings the voice of the worker’s family into his text. He gives them space to share their own stories with readers.

The book is an important documentation of the coal miners’ struggle between poverty and needing to support their family through their risky work in the mines. Yet, the style of the book (news style) gives a sense of repetition and boredom. All of the stories have the same narrating style and all are about the deaths of mineworkers worldwide while working for certain cooperations or governments.

I find Mark Amerika’s How to Be an Artist to be a challenging text. I believe that the writer intends to send social, economic, and political messages as dependent on his knowledge of art, business, Internet, and writing ability. The numerous explicit and implicit references to capitalism are interesting, since I believe this is the first book we have read this semester that covers this issue.

In the section entitled “OK Texts”, Amerika combines technological and artistic ideas with unexpected language. For example, he playfully incorporates words, phrases, and questions that we often encounter as users of software or Internet such as: “Your health will one day disappear and you will die without meaning. End session?” and “We cannot process your information. Your information is corrupt and needs cleansing. Erase brain?” (3). Amerika makes following the hidden messages within his text an uneasy task for the readers. In the next lines, Amerika states “Multi-national corporations create user-friendly software so that you will always depend on their lens to the world. More co-dependency” (4). Here, I think, by presenting this idea, the writer sends a clear message and wants us, his readers, to put forth the necessary effort in finding the meaning. The message is obviously not aesthetic, and might be read as the opposite. In comparison to our other readings throughout the semester, this book is distinct in its attempts to raise a different awareness and extend beyond creating the hypertextual consciousness (HTC) using a combination of differential tools and ideas.

Citizen: An American Lyric is one of the more accessible books we have read so far. Claudia Rankine uses everyday language to convey her messages about commonplace racist behavior practiced against black people. As a reader, I appreciate the small details Rankine shares. Her anecdotes are sometimes ironically funny but painful, like the story on page 15 about the neighbor and the babysitting friend. Although the white neighbor has seen the black babysitting friend before, he does not recognize him when he sees him for the second time because his black skin color makes him unrecognizable. The neighbor calls to inform [you] (YOU is the pronoun the writer uses) that he will call the police when he sees “a menacing black guy casing both your homes” (15). From the neighbor’s perspective, the person he sees at the moment of calling [you] is not the same nice person he has already met with [you]. After the police’s confirmation of the black guy’s identity, the neighbor apologizes and the problem seems to have been resolved. Yet the issue of racist behavior against black people has started long before this incident and will last long after. I think this story or incident along with many other portrayals conveyed in Citizen: An American Lyric reflect the unconscious actions of whites against blacks. Although such acts or words by white persons toward black persons might seem innocuous, Rankine tells a different story. I believe that one of the writer’s goals is to raise awareness of the kind of racist acts and language that might not even be seen by whites as racist. The writer is also highlighting the idea of what she calls the “historical self”, or what I understand as the accumulation of racist behavior throughout history and its reflection on black people’s everyday life in the present time.

I had read a while ago about interactive fiction, but I had never tried it. Galatea is my first experience with this kind of fiction. My first attempts to interact with Galatea were not successful as I kept typing words and asking questions which resulted in answers such as “that’s not a verb I recognize” and “You can’t form your question into words”. This was rather devastating. Then, I typed the word “help” and got some hints about verbs and shortcuts that could be used. Although this information was helpful, it was also limiting. In order to get more information and keep Galatea talking, I needed to guess other words based on her answers to some of my questions.

Overall, I admit that the whole experience was limiting. I was eager to know more about Galatea, but every time I asked a question Galatea brought the artist into the conversation. Almost everything Galatea talks about is related to the artist including her memories and her perceptions of life, death, and God. Although Galatea is the main character and narrator, through this activity she is decreased to be merely a voice who speaks about the artist. There are some important details she shares about the artist like the place where they met, the studio where they live, and about the artist’s family and childhood, but she did not share not very much (at least in my experience) about herself. Despite feeling limited, I found this project very stimulating and I can’t wait to know more about Galatea and the artist from the different experiences of other students in our upcoming class.

Before listing the traffic reports, Goldsmith conveys in his text “Traffic” a segment of an interview. The interviewer asks the interviewee about his Death series and the interviewee states “I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death… and every time you turned on the radio they said something like, ‘Four million are going to die’”. From the beginning, readers are introduced to the ideas of death, life, and the limitations of life as the whole text is associated with time. Every report is connected to a specific hour of the day; however, as Marjorie Perloff states in her chapter entitled “Conceptualist Bridges / Digital Tunnels: Kenneth Goldsmith’s Traffic”, the hours are not specified or associated with day or night but are rather left undesignated. The theme of traffic instills the sense of being besieged and trapped within time and place. Goldsmith’s unwillingness to declare the exact time makes me wonder if these traffic reports occur within one specific day. In other words, reading the text gives me the feeling that these traffic events are not limited to one day, but are rather recorded over a longer period of time or over a couple of days. I arrive at this realization because the last report refers to the traffic problems solved and to the smooth movements of traffic with no delays, all of which I believe need more time to pass. Several questions are posited and many attempts are made to understand and draw connections between Goldsmith’s “Traffic” and the key components of time and place. Accordingly, I think that even what he calls unoriginal or uncreative texts are original and creative if readers and critics do not conform them to traditional judgment approaches.