Art, Poetry, and the Digital World

In Felicia Heman's poem, she is expressing the unbiased, un-jaded, innocent perspective of a child. They can carelessly come to terms with nature, loving the simplest of it's gifts, with no fear and no regret. They have not yet experienced the hardships of life; the broken hearts, the terror, the biases that life brings about. They are merely satisfied with the smallest tokens of nature, and see them only as a simple amusement to life. They have not experienced what these simple things can turn into, while the onlooking adult is all too consumed with the brutalities of nature. 

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.

There will be a day that will change your perspective on life forever, make you see the hardships nature brings. Until that day comes though, revel in the beauty of nature and it's smallest gifts. 

Art and Nature VS. Technology 

After reading all three presentations of the Heman's poem, I realized that presentation of the text is  very important. The HTML version is a very generic version, like we are so used to reading. Just a simple recreation of the original text. I 

was alarmed to read the TEL encoded version. I have never seen anything like this before, and although I am aware that it is the same poem (same words and everything), the layout of the page is alien to my eyes. I do not get the same feel as when I read the HTML or page version. Now all I see are computerized, digitized keys of what was once words. I do not really understand the point of this presentation of the poem. It seem like a bunch of jibberish strewn on a page, with confusing marks denoting line breaks and such. I finally came to the page version, which is the most authentic version. I personally liked reading this one the best. It was the most romanticized version with it's layout. I could somehow relate to the words and feelings more in this version. I saw the dull yellow and worn pages and I thought about the author and her feelings while writing. While the HTML version is probably the most comfortable to me, now looking at it, it look's so fresh and new, with the glistening white background of the computer screen. Not having the page version really does not give full justice to the author or the piece. This was how she intended the reader to view the piece, and I feel we should stick to her original intentions. They are all the same poem, but in another light they really are not. Poetry is suppose to move the reader, feel in-tune to their own senses and that of the authors, and I certainly did not get that by reading the encoded version. Digitizing really takes away the romantic perspective of poems, and makes it like an alien, cryptic sort of message. Looking at the aim of Heman's poem, to discuss the beauties of nature and art, and the difficulties adults have at seeing art as mere art, I do not believe that Hemans would approve of this version of her poem. She is saying to revel in the simplest things, for later everything is made too difficult, there is too much trying to decode nature in it's simplest, most beautiful form. Here we are trying to transform her work into a complicated, technologically advanced version. It really seems to destroy her message. I understand the benefits of digitizing. With all the resources available on computers and through the internet, it makes it easy to have a digitized version readily available to find the simplest of things in poems. I just believe that the most justice is given to the original, or closest to the original, version of the poem. We should be able to take Heman's message to heart. Stop trying to make things more difficult than they need be, just value them for what they are, in all their innocent and natural beauty.