Myka Vielstimmig: "Petals on a Wet, Black Bough: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay" (5)
As readers may know, the identity of "Myka Vielstimmig" is actually
the collaboration between Kathleen Yancey of Clemson University and Michael
Spooner of the Utah State University Press. In typical "Myka Vielstimmig"
form, "Petals on a Wet, Black Bough" challenges the conventions of text and
print by creating a multi-voiced and multi-threaded discussion about, as the
subtitle suggests, "Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay." The collaborative
identity of Myka Vielstimmig does what so many "straight text" essays cannot--Myka
not only talks about different kinds of textuality and collaboration and their
impact on the "new essay," Myka actually incorporates these different textualities
into the writing of this piece by using different fonts, interlacing text
blocks, and text wrapping to create an essay which is not only textual, but
visual as well. Piecing together parts of emails exchanged between Spooner
and Yancey, the many texts of "Petals" emerge as voices in an ongoing,
circular discussion, voices not assignable to one partner or the other, but
truly the "many voices" of Myka Vielstimmig. The goal of "Petals"
is not to come to grand conclusions or a comprehensive definition of what
textuality, collaboration, and the "new essay" might be; rather,
its goal is to offer ideas and possibilities for new ways to think about these
issues. Myka Vielstimmig certainly achieves this goal.
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 |
7 8 9 10 11 12 |
13 14 15 16 17 18 |
19 20 21 22 23 |
Contents |
