Here, Keller examines new media poetry and suggests the importance of looking at Megan Sapnar’s “Car Wash” not from a solely literary perspective. Keller urges readers to consider the author as a composer who simultaneously combines words with sound and image. Keller asks, “How like or unlike is ‘Car Wash’ from a poem on the traditional page?” He also outlines the pros and cons of writing for the computer screen. He breaks the poem down and discovers that the line breaks appear in a non-traditional sense to make a more traditional Shakespearean sonnet. Furthermore, musical breaks occur in a rhetorical way to make the audience focus their attention on the visual poem. The author, aware that students are becoming more familiar with electronic texts, makes the assumption that new media will popularize a new form of poetry, one in which line breaks are not stuck to the page, but rather, fluid and mobile.
To view Megan Sapnar’s poem “Car Wash” please follow this link: http://www.poemsthatgo.com/gallery/summer2000/carwash/index.htm