I was going through an old notebook when I came across this entry from 1971 regarding my vision of a poem of the future. I jotted it down under the title “A Dream.”

“I picture the future poet composing his poems on a small machine with numbered buttons and a graduated switch that would allow a blending effect to take place. The machine would be attached to a stimulating device of the brain’s emotional areas, a cap or helmet, perhaps, designed to be worn when the poem is being read. The poet would familiarize himself with the emotions produced by the pressing of buttons, and blending, almost as a painter learns the rudiments of his craft. Then, upon composing a poem, the poet would include the numbers of the emotional “music” to accompany the text, indicating which buttons to be pushed (or which combinations of buttons via the slide switch), in order to approximate the emotions to be felt at each point in the poem. The poet would concentrate his efforts upon the subtle interplay of emotions, not necessarily his own, and eventually compose emotional “music” for such traditional poets as Homer, Lanier, Pope, etc. etc.,–giving an added dimension even to texts not fully realized. The reader of poetry would become adept at the punching of keys in this self-stimulating device–and thereby experience the fleeting emotions and uninterpretable sensations that the true poet feels. I got this idea from a dream in which I encountered what I termed the “super poem” that, in many places, did not make literal sense but produced an aura of emotion that gave it both power and beauty.” Jesse