No Ideas but in Technology: William Carlos Williams, Concepts of the New, and Electronic Literature

This article argues that William Carlos Williams’s work foreshadows the evolution of electronic literature, which it suggests is one of the main fields in which poets can now explore new literary directions. The first half of the article inspects concepts of the new in William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All and Charles Bernstein’s landmark essay “The Academy in Peril: William Carlos Williams Meets the MLA.” It speculates on what form the new can now take in contemporary poetry and the relationship between the new and the experimental. It also probes the changes that have taken place in the relationship between poetry, critical writing, and the academy since the publication of Spring and All and Bernstein’s “The Academy in Peril” essay. The second half of the article explores Williams’s involvement in the project The Readies that is a precursor to electronic literature and the manipulation of his poetry in generative computer bots. It also demonstrates how ideas about space, ekphrasis and enjambment expressed in Williams’s essays and creative practice relate to features of electronic literature.