Prehistoric Digital Poetry

Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archeology of Forms, 1959–1995 is a nonfiction book by C. T. Funkhouser. It was published in 2007 by the University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The book is seen as one of the most thoughtful and thorough critiques and catalogs of digital poetics, and is groundbreaking for its conclusions as to the origins of digital poetry placing them decades earlier than many other writers on the subject.

Funkhouser's book is divided into five distinct sections: Introduction, Origination, Visual and Kinetic Design Poems, Hypertext and Hypermedia, Alternative Arrangements, Techniques Enabled. There are also two Appendices (Appendix A, and Appendix B), as well as Acknowledgments and text Notes.

The Introduction to the book deals largely in generalities, seeking to lay out a basic definition and conception of digital poetry before moving into the examination of individual digital works. Here Funkhouser also deals with critiques and alternate definitions of digital poetry by from writers and theorists other than himself.

The Origins section gives a detailed account of the progression of digital poetry from early computer experiments and tests, performed by a select few individuals, into the earliest forms of computer permutation writing and text generation.

Visual and Kinetic Design Poems deals primarily with works built on font and text formatting. He provides a number of examples similar to the concrete poets of the first half of the 20th century, along with discussions of typology and text manipulation.

The Hypertext and Hypermedia chapter of the book deals primarily with text and media links and their integration into digital poetics.

Alternative Arrangements is an examination of internet writing collectives and communities built around computer networks.

The final chapter of the book entitled Techniques Enabled focuses primarily on the ways in which technology can be advanced purely for the sake of digital poetry. That is to say the last chapter of the book discusses the ways in which digital poets are developing new software and pushing the limits of their computers' functionality in search of new forms of technological expression.