Literary Games

"Literary game actually is far from meaningless — it means several things. One is the metaphorical game played by the author of a literary work with the reader, a figure that can help us understand why the author writes particular things, what the reader may think in response, and how the text has anticipated the 'moves' or 'play' of the reader. A wonderful investigation of this sort of literary game is found in Playtexts (Motte 1995), which considers many playful works of literature, including Pale Fire and Nadja. This issue of Poems that Go features more literal games, however, so we had best turn to those that structure the interactions of participants through explicit rules. . . . 

The games in this issue, drawing on the tradition of computer and video games in various ways, provide a more certain proof that the literary game can do the serious, hard work of both literature and gaming, and suggest several ways in which different aspects of a literary game can function effectively together." -- from Literary Games, Poems that GO, Fall 2003