Modernist feedback loops: Norbert Wiener's cybernetics and the poetry of Ezra Pound
Heather A. Love · 2014
This paper addresses the conference theme of encouraging new research and publishing in fields related to Wiener's work by using his concept of the cybernetic feedback loop to read Ezra Pound's modernist poetry. Pound's Chinese History Cantos form a case study, and the author explicates the cybernetic dimensions of their aesthetic structures of communication. By producing meaning at the intersection of recognizable linguistic pattern and evolving response, the poetry fosters a distinctly cybernetic set of critical faculties as it challenges readers' information-processing capabilities. The argument demonstrates how Wiener's theories offer helpful frameworks for literary critics who seek to understand the intellectual currents of the early twentieth century. Further, it repositions the scientific and technological elements of Wiener's cybernetic experiments as part of a longer cultural lineage that extends back to the early twentieth century. The author aims to introduce new frames of reference and texts for comparison into both literary studies and technological cybernetics research.