Naughty electric monk: technological experience in the poetry of Cao Seng

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on Cao Seng, a young poet from Shanghai, and seeks to conceptualize digitally- and technologically-oriented strain of his poetry. The material for the study was chiefly obtained from the poet’s collection The Wild Herald (2023). The essay builds up on the text-by-text close-reading, pursuing to trace the transformations of the author’s creative method. New media theory (Manovich, Jenkins, Cayley) is used to situate the observed literary practices in a broader cultural context. Since Cao Seng sees poetry as a “mode of cognition”, his writing generally serves the idea of processing new experience. In terms of technological imagery, three major strategies could be loosely identified: narrative, parodic, and lyric. The first one states an initial effort to legitimize the digital sphere as a source of inspiration. The second mode relates to the representations of cyberspace via formal experiments (meta register, word-building, syntax variations, etc.). Finally, the lyrical pathos could be conveyed through the religious motifs of compassion and self-cultivation. Altogether these features shape Cao Seng’s poetry as a flexible tool for renewing perception, internalizing and transcending digital and technological phenomena.