My Way_ Speeches and Poems - Charles Bernstein

72 AN INTERVIEW WITH HANNAH MOCKEL-RIEKE
dominant color scheme.) The advent of audio on the net promises
to make available the sound of poetry in a way that has been previously
stymied by the dearth of readily available audio recordings.
And, finally, the possibilities for conversation and collaboration
among poets nationally and internationally, through electronic discussion
groups, promises to open up scene- and regionally based
enclaves to greater participation and new modes of exchange.
HMR: Finally: Apparently there is a discussion going on whether the
effects created by interactive media, computer networks, "hypertexts",
etc., can serve as metaphor for what language-centered writing
has been doing. What is your opinion on that?
CB: Hypertext as metaphor is for me a crucial way to discuss what
interests me in linking up different textual and discursive environments
in a nonhierarchic way. Certainly this relates to collage,
which would make Schwitters a hypertext innovator, and it also
relates to the nonlinear approaches to reading, invented by many
modernists and contemporary poets. Equally important, hypertextual
organization may finally help to break teaching, textbooks,
and critical writing from their deadly boring fetishization of narrative
and expository ordering of information, moving these activities
away from outmoded forms of ideational mimesis and toward poetic
methods of exploring associated fields of information or material.