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Brian Kim Stefans

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Brian Kim Stefans
Born28 February 1969
Academic background
Alma materBard College, CUNY Graduate School and University Center, Brown University

Brian Kim Stefans (born 1969) is an American poet known for his work in experimental poetry and electronic literature. He is a professor of poetry, new media and screenplay studies in the English department of UCLA.[1]

Stefans was born in Rutherford, New Jersey and earned a bachelor's degree from Bard College and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Electronic literature from Brown University.[2][3]

Digital poetry

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A resident of New York from 1992-2005, Stefans was an active participant in the poetry culture of the city as an editor and organizer, publishing numerous reviews in outlets such as Publishers Weekly, The Boston Review,[4] St. Mark's Poetry Project newsletter, Shark, Rain Taxi, Verse, Tripwire and other small journals in the United States and abroad. He was an early contributor to UbuWeb, a digital journal for "avant-garde poetry and sound art" founded in 1996.[3]

He established his website arras.net[5] in 1998, a site devoted to new media poetry and poetics where his interactive art and digital poems such as "Suicide in an Airplane (1919)", “Star Wars (one letter at a time)”,[6] “The Dreamlife of Letters”[7] and “Kluge: A Meditation” can be found.

The Dreamlife of Letters (2000) is one of Stefans' most cited works.[8][9] It was first published on Stefans' website arras.net in 2000, and was anthologised in the Electronic Literature Collection's first volume in 2006. In his book Electronic Literature, Scott Rettberg describes how Stefans first wrote a series of concrete poems using an alphabetised list of words from an essay by the poet and feminist theorist Rachel Blau DuPlessis. Stefans then animated the poems using the now discontinued platform Flash, and presented the animations as a non-interactive 11 minute video shared on the web. Although Dreamlife is neither technically nor stylistically complex, Rettberg argues that it successfully demonstrates how the spatial positions and movements of words can carry as much semantic meaning as the word itself.[10] In his "Introduction to American Poetry between 2000-2009", Michael Davidson describes how Dreamlife "expands concrete poetry into a dynamic, tensile exploration of alphabetic characters".[11]

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Stefans' print books of poetry include Viva Miscegenation,[12] Kluge: A Meditation and other works,[13]What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers,[14] Angry Penguins,[15] Gulf,[16] and Free Space Comix.[17] Along with several chapbooks of poetry, his other books include Before Starting Over: Selected Interviews and Essays 1994-2005 (Salt Publishing, 2006) and Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics[18] which includes experimental essays on the role of algorithm in poetry and culture.

Critical work

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Previous critical writings include “Conceptual Writing: The L.A. Brand”,[19] the series “Third Hand Plays”[20] for the website of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art concerning electronic literature, and "Terrible Engines: A Speculative Turn in Recent Poetry and Fiction”[21] that inaugurates his recent interest in applying concepts from recent Continental philosophy to new forms of literature.

Writing on Asian American art and literature include “Remote Parsee: Asian American Poetry Since 1970”[22] and “Miscegenated Scripts: A Theory of Asian American New Media.”

References

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  1. ^ "Stefans, Brian Kim". UCLA Department of English. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  2. ^ "Brian Kim Stefans". Poetry Foundation. 2023-11-13. Retrieved 2023-11-13.
  3. ^ a b Chan, Sunny (2016-09-21). "An interview with BRIAN KIM STEFANS". Contemporary Literature. 57 (3): 303–319. doi:10.3368/cl.57.3.303. ISSN 0010-7484.
  4. ^ "Brian Kim Stefans". Boston Review. Retrieved 8 February 2024.
  5. ^ "Home". arras.net.
  6. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim. "Star Wars, one letter at a time". eliterature.org.
  7. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim. "The Dreamlife of Letteres". eliterature.org.
  8. ^ Reither, Saskia (2003). Computerpoesie: Studien zur Modifikation poetischer Texte durch den Computer. Bielefeld: Transcript. ISBN 978-3-89942-160-6. OCLC 53903436.
  9. ^ Eskelinen, Markku (2012). Cybertext poetics: the critical landscape of new media literary theory. International texts in critical media aesthetics. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-1-4411-2438-8.
  10. ^ Rettberg, Scott (2019). Electronic literature. Cambridge, UK Medford, MA: Polity press. pp. 139–140. ISBN 978-1-5095-1677-3.
  11. ^ Davidson, Michael (2011). "Introduction: American Poetry, 2000-2009". Contemporary Literature. 52 (4): 597–629. doi:10.1353/cli.2011.0052. ISSN 0010-7484. JSTOR 41472488.
  12. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2012). Viva Miscegenation. Los Angeles, Calif: Make Now Press. ISBN 9780981596259. OCLC 836792811.
  13. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2007). Kluge: a meditation : and other works. Roof Books. ISBN 9780937804742. OCLC 124508333.
  14. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2006). What Is Said to the Poet Concerning Flowers. Factory School. ISBN 9781600010484. OCLC 70632724.
  15. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2000). Angry Penguins. New York: Harry Tankoos Books. OCLC 44408875.
  16. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (1998). Gulf (1st ed.). Object Editions. OCLC 41499417.
  17. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (1988). Free space comix. Roof Books. OCLC 39043255.
  18. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2003). Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics. Atelos. OCLC 52511272.
  19. ^ "Area Sneaks Sheets: The third materialization of Area Sneaks". Archived from the original on 23 February 2014.
  20. ^ Stefans, Brian (27 September 2011). "Third Hand Plays: Putting It All Together, the "Comedy of Separation"". Open Space. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
  21. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2014). "Terrible Engines: A Speculative Turn in Recent Poetry and Fiction". Comparative Literature Studies. 51 (1): 159–183. doi:10.5325/complitstudies.51.1.0159.
  22. ^ Stefans, Brian Kim (2001). "Remote parsee: an alternative grammar of asian north american poetry". In Wallace, Mark; Marks, Steven (eds.). Telling It Slant: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s. OCLC 59433689.
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