The New Media Poetry and Poetics issue of Leonardo Electronic Almanac gathers in one location many of the major practitioners of electronic literature, circa 2005-2006. Emphasis on writing in networked and programmable media. The authors set out in this issue to perform critical readings of new media poems through various approaches and contexts, so as to define new media poetry and measure the extent to which digital media necessitate a re-assessment of writing generally. A number of critical readings address the role of code in electronic literature (a topic also featured since 1998 in ebr, www.electronicbookreview.com). A frequent argument, is that poems derive meaning from their own precarious existence in networked language environments. The interplay between traditional and digital poetics allows us to see continuities and differences between digital media and earlier modes of innovative writing, notably in the way that certain poets have transformed their concrete poems into "new media" versions.