18 - The Poem in the Digital Age

Summary

Focusing on the history of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1865 abolitionist poem “Christmas Bells,” this chapter argues that the mediation, reproduction, and circulation of poetry in the digital age are best understood in relation to a longer history of poetry's technological mediation and reproduction by print and older nonprint media. Analyzing how the text of “Christmas Bells” has been edited, cut, reformatted, repurposed, and reproduced for a wide range of media and media platforms over a period of 150 years (via print periodical, postcard, rubber crafting stamp, musical performance, gift tag, television broadcast, YouTube video, dinner menu, souvenir plate, Wikipedia page, and more) reveals not only the common and ongoing mutability of the poetic text in the age of its mechanical reproduction but also the need for new critical models that reassess notions of the poem, author, reader, and book as cardinal points of poetry studies. Reimagining poetry studies in the digital age also means reimagining the study of poetry produced centuries before; it means reconsidering the longer history of poetry's remediation that the digital age inherits, extends, and remakes.