Digitizing Text: "Child and Flowers"

Homework for 3/27
Go to poetess archive
Look at three versions of Bijon poem (child and flowers): page image, HTML version, TEI encoded version
Answer these questions:

Is the poem the same in these 3 versions?
Although the words remained unaltered, I found each version of "Child and Flowers" to be slightly different. Reading the HTML version was much like reading any old page on the web, and it simply felt different from reading an actual, tangible text. I really didn't have a sense for the authenticity of the poem. This feeling was further extended by my reading of the poem in the TEI encoded version. If i had ever stumbled upon such a format in the past, I simply would have dismissed it on the grounds that there must be some sort of technological error of transfer--much like when I try to open a document in Word and it ends up looking like a strange, unintelligible code. Once I got used to the format, I found that I could simply ignore the surrounding (and to me, meaningless) text. I think that the final version, the page image, was my favorite way to read the text. It felt more like reading an actual book, and I could more greatly appreciate the poem for its textual genuineness. Thus, the differences between these versions came not from the differences in text, but rather from the sentiments associated with each respective version.
What difference will digitzing make to our understanding of poems?
Digitizing poems allows the texts to be more easily accessible to a greater number of people. As we learned with programs like JUXTA and TagCrowd, the digitization of texts provides new and expanded ways of conducting research, leading to fresh perpectives and offbeat theories. Digitizing texts also gives them an aura of permanence that we have come to both expect and reply upon in an increasingly digitized world.
Apply the poem's theme about art to the poem itself: does digitizing contribute to Heman's aim in writing the poem?
I think that Heman's aim in writing the poem is to both create and preserve a piece of art. Digitizing, then, contributes to Heman's aim because it lends a sense of immortality to the poem itself.

In Class, 3/27

"For a day is coming to quell the tone

That rings in thy laughter, thou joyous one!

And to dim thy brow with a touch of care.

Under the gloss of its clustering hair;

And to tame the flash of thy cloudless eyes

Into the stillness of autumn skies;

And to teach thee that grief hath her needful part,

Midst the hidden things of each human heart!" (lines 33-40)

In this passage, the speaker is describing the time when a child will lose her innocence, when her eyes will be opened to the sorrows of the world. The speaker sees children as being capable of making incredible, untainted observations of the natural world around them. The speaker, however, is idealizing childhood and its perceived air of innocence, not taking into account the fact that children are not always the happy, carefree individuals that adults believe them to be.

In class discussion:
The format does not necessarily change the meaning of the text, but it takes away from the reader's ability to process the poem and find its significance. The TEI version, for example, was so full of codes and symbols that I was too distracted to really read the poem. The important aspect of the TEI format is the surrounding code; a simple reading of the poem would be easier (and more logical) to do in the HTML or Page Image version.

These formats come into being in various ways. The "technology" of the printed book is so commonplace to us that we simply overlook it. It is extremely expensive to put page images online, but they offer the best representation of the original text. The HTML or Text versions, for example, often misplace stanza breaks or add strange characters. Even so, digitizing texts preserves them in a way that books cannot.