dia poetry”—that is, cyberpoetry or digital poetry—
made aesthetic use of hypertext and other computer
technologies to produce interactive poetry. Also im-
portant were Language and performance poetry.
Experimental writers in the 1990’s included David
Antin, Rae Armentrout, Tina Darragh, Hedwig
Gorski, Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, Erica Hunt, Maggie
Estep, P. Inman, Ron Silliman, Edwin Torres, Carla
Harryman, Fanny Howe, Jackson Mac Low, Berna-
dette Mayer, Harryette Mullen, Steven McCaffery
(Canadian), Ricardo Sanchez, Hannah Weiner, Saul
Williams, and Emanuel Xavier, creator of the Glam
Slam poetry competition in New York.
Impact The 1990’s were important for poetry in at
least two ways. Publicly accessible poetry was made
possible by the exponential rise of Web usage. Also,
in the United States more than in Canada, the trend
was toward a more democratized and accessible po-
etry. There was a degree of acceptance in the public
mind of poetic experiments that went far beyond the
printed page. Institutions such as the National En-
dowment for the Arts did not make changes that sup-
ported performance poetry, although the presence
of Language poets in university writing programs
during the 1990’s demonstrates acceptance of some
experimental approaches.
Further Reading
Bloom, Harold, and David Lehman, eds.The Best of
the Best American Poetr y, 1988-1997. New York:
Scribner, 1998. Assembles a large number of po-
ems from the 1990’s and criticizes Adrienne
Rich’s contribution to this series.
Glazier, Loss.Digital Poetics: Hypertext, Visual-Kinetic
Text and Writing in Programmable Media.Tuscaloosa:
University of Alabama Press, 2001. Celebrates the
arrival of digital poetry, its contribution to theo-
ries that recognize texts as problematic; hyper-
text; interactive poetry; and more.
Lang, Robert, ed.Contemporar y Canadian Authors.
Vol. 1. New York: Gale Canada, 1996. This re-
source has both Canadian poets’ biographies and
lists of works.
Morris, Adalaide, and Thomas Swiss, eds.New Media
Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006. The articles main-
tain that the new poetics is a vast digital break
from traditional written poetry.
Rich, Adrienne, and David Lehman, eds.The Best
American Poetr y 1996. New York: Scribner, 1996.
Includes some overlooked poets from the 1990’s.
Schaub, Thomas, ed.Contemporar y Literature42, no.
2 (Summer, 2001). This issue is titled “American
Poetry of the 1990’s,” a resource for those who
would like to explore a fin de siècle theme of loss.
Silliman, Ron, ed. In the American Tree. Orono,
Maine: National Poetry Foundation, 2001. An-
thology of 1990’s poetry.
Suzanne Araas VeselySee also Alvarez, Julia; Angelou, Maya; Komun-
yakaa, Yusef; Literature in Canada; Literature in the
United States; National Endowment for the Arts
(NEA); Ondaatje, Michael; Spoken word movement;
Strand, Mark; Updike, John. Pogs
Definition Children’s game of milk caps
Playing Pogs became a major national fad for school-age
children of the early-middle 1990’s. While a game of the
simplest nature, it inspired a contentious disagreement over
rights to use the name “Pog” itself.
The game of Pogs, which children played with small
cardboard wafers, or milk caps, was a sidewalk activ-
ity popular for decades in Hawaii. In 1993, after it
caught on in California, Pogs gave rise to a national,
multimillion-dollar industry.
Once introduced, Pogs easily gained popularity at
schools, where the milk caps themselves could be car-
ried unobtrusively in pockets. The game’s popularity
was enhanced by the ease with which it could be
turned to gambling, prompting some school admin-
istrations to ban it from campuses. Pogs was otherwise
regarded in favorable light by educators, it being a
group activity in contrast to the video and computer
games massively popular since the prior decade.
The game entered the marketplace in the form
of “collector Pogs,” featuring various licensed char-
acters from comic strips, television, or films. Due to
the ease of their manufacture, advertising Pogs also
quickly appeared.
The name of the cardboard disks and the game
itself originated in Hawaii, where a Maui beverage
company, Haleakala Dairy, made a juice drink of
passion fruit, orange, and guava, marketed under
the Pog name. The cardboard disks found on these
drinks provided the original playing pieces.678 Pogs The Nineties in America