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1. The Pines at Walden Pond

   This lyric hypertext poem is based on a speaker’s thoughts and observations centered upon the pines at Walden Pond, a space celebrated in American literature thanks to Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden, his experiment in self-reliance and Transcendental song.

   Larsen’s hypertext is mapped upon an image of a pine branch, in which several nodes are connected by spindly linear trails. Each trail of links can be interpreted as a line of thought, starting with four nodes that focus on the pines, the speaker’s perception of them, Thoreau, and the speaker herself. Following the link trails lead to nodes that hold together well, though there are both physical and conceptual branchings. Clicking on links as they appear within each text also creates thematic associations. Both ways navigating this poem lead to a powerfully associative coherence in a piece that engages the beauty of the place while questioning some of Thoreau’s politics.

   (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

   Scott Rettberg - 03.02.2012 - 15:45

2. Euclid

   This VRML piece is a meditation on Euclidean geometry, matter, mortality, eternity and language in all of these contexts. It consists of two spaces, the first of which we experience as a movie that displays four stanzas, each of which expresses Euclidean elements: solid, plane, line, point. The next space is intriguing because it has the four words above, plus two more words, all surrounding a cube made of clusters of 2-3 letters. Navigate this space when the initial movie ends, seeing the different views, and you’ll get the point of what Knoebel is trying to express with this minimalist poem in a virtual environment.

   Note: To be able to read this work, you’ll need a VRML client (Recommendations: PC: Cortona 3D Viewer, Mac & Linux: OpenVRML). Be patient: you aren’t able to explore from the outset, only after you’ve seen the views. Right click on the window for a menu of options.

   Source: Leonardo Flores,  I ♥ E-Poetry.

   Leonardo Flores - 13.03.2012 - 12:30

3. Incarnation: Heart of the Maze

   This lyrically powerful hypertext poem is inspired and informed by a large number of sources, primarily on mythology (mostly Greek) and labyrinths (mandala shaped ones). Centered upon the Minotaur myth, the labyrinth Daedalus and Icarus built to contain it, Ariadne and the Minotaur himself, the poem gives a voice to some of these characters, representing them visually with an image of a portion of the mandala-shaped stone maze, and a body part (in the name given to the node. The hypertext is structured like a mandala, allowing readers to take direct paths in towards a center space with its own nodes. The interface also allows for lateral or circular movement across voices, placing them in conversation with one another and allowing readers to spiral in towards the center. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

   Carolyn Guertin - 20.06.2012 - 22:42

4. JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine

   JABBER produces nonsense words that sound like English words, in the way that the portmanteau words from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky sound like English words.

   When a letter comes into contact with another letter or group of letters, a calculation occurs to determine whether they bond according to the likelihood that they would appear contiguously in the English lexicon. Clusters of letters accumulate to form words, which results in a dynamic nonsense word sound poem floating around on the screen with each iteration of the generator.

   JABBER realises a linguistic chemistry with letters as atoms and words as molecules.

   (Source: Author's description at Poems That Go)

   Scott Rettberg - 18.10.2012 - 10:58

5. Broken

   This poem is constructed around an erotic scenario between two recurring characters in Sondheim’s writing: Nikuko “a Russian ballet dancer” and Dr. Leopold Konninger. From the loading frame in this Flash piece, we are provided a point of view as if we’re the computer and are about to enter Sondheim’s imagination, and the audio doesn’t set this up as a comforting prospect. The poem seems to be designed to disturb as images of fragmented, objectified human beings gaze at one from positions of powerlessness and empowerment. Nikuko herself is portrayed as a kind of geisha dominatrix, particularly when juxtaposed with Dr. Konninger’s post-coital supine body. Subsequent images of a pile of heads and body parts and phrases like “carnage and extasy” create an unsettling mix of death and “la petit mort.”

   (Source: Leonardo Flores)

   Helene Helgeland - 12.11.2012 - 14:39

6. Nomad Lingo

   From April 1, 2000 to April 1 2001, David Jhave Johnston launched his career as a digital poet with a year of poetry experiments using Flash. Titled “Nomad Lingo,” he published several e-poems every month— producing a treasure trove of works that attest to his raw talent, whimsical style, and the ability to create a lyrical voice through lines that are both sensuous and theoretically engaging.

   Some aspects he experiments with is how kinetic language and pacing can evoke different meanings and shape tone. For example, the flame-like words in “Watching Fire” is so much more relaxing than the frantic “Me Critters.” Similarly, the lines in “Ceaseless,” while fast-paced, are readable and put reader’s at ease, while “Flood” overwhelms the reader with its accelerating pace and movement. He also works with minimalist interactivity in “Irreconciliable” and “Tsunami” by making the letters and lines respond to mouseovers to reveal other texts.

   (Source: Leonardo Flores)

   Helene Helgeland - 12.11.2012 - 15:01

7. For the Moon

   This ode to the moon is written and visually designed to underscore the cyclical nature of the moon’s stages. Using Quicktime VR on a 245 pixel wide circular strip, the view of this work is like being inside a ring and you rotate (or does it rotate?) to see its entire surface. The lines and stanzas in this poem have been arranged on this surface, spaced and indented in relation to one another to create a primarily horizontal visual progression. On the top and bottom of the strip are the stages of the moon, the way you’d find them on a calendar, signaling the passage of time as one reads this poem. The words also signal the passage of time as the speaker discusses her relation to the moon as an oracular companion in the skies, whose stages of dress and undress, bloatedness and thinness, continue to frustrate “lifetimes” of expectation.

   (Source: Leonardo Flores)

   Helene Helgeland - 13.11.2012 - 18:05

8. Days of JavaMoon

   This hypertext work interconnects the moon with women, sexuality, Tantric texts, ancient folk medicine, and JavaScript. Yes. JavaScript. And it works because it aligns computer scripting codes with ancient algorithms: in this case, recipes and potions for psychological and sexual male enhancement. The scripting language displayed in some of the lexia is readable for those with some code literacy, and can be followed along by most, since it contains abundant natural language. Gender politics feature prominently in this work, touching on themes of sexual abuse, homosexuality, sexual enhancement, ancient recipes for gaining power over women, penis enlargement, modern ways in which women have low self-esteem, religion, and more. The audio component is in Realplayer format, a plugin that can be annoyingly commercial, but the experience is certainly enhanced by the light touches of music and sound in this piece. This piece has some random and interactive elements, and is therefore worth exploring several times to get a sense for the whole. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

   Hannelen Leirvåg - 02.02.2013 - 12:38

9. Death Valley

   This short poem uses a backdrop of stars flickering and occasionally shooting in the background as lines of text flow up the screen accompanied by images that emphasize some aspects of the text. This is not a romanticized cool night sky with distant stars: its imagery emphasizes the heat of blazing suns. The speaker isn’t a Romantic poet gazing longingly at the unreachable: she describes us as “dangerous” burning as hotly as the stars themselves, but with hellish desire.

   The desire to touch the stars is emphasized by the textual responsiveness as each line and stanza moves from the bottom to the top of the screen. Touch the lines with the pointer, and a hissing, loud, whisper of a voice reads the lines out loud, once for each contact, perhaps a reminder of how loud the burning of stars must sound, if sound could carry across such vast, empty, distances.

   If we shift our focus from the macroscopic scale of the universe to the microscopic scale of electrical impulses, are those untouchable pixels flickering on the screen equally distant?

   (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

   Hannelen Leirvåg - 10.02.2013 - 14:33

10. Falling

    This visually and rhythmically enthralling piece uses a minimalist interface to create a work that resonates in its repetitions. Organized to look both as a visual piece and a code poem, it uses a simple interface to organize the language and produce multiple readings of each part. I recommend reading this poem out loud to feel the rhythm established by all the repetitions of falling in each line, starting with the page as it loads before clicking on any links. Clicking on the words in the first column trigger the display of new parts of the poem on the right hand column, parts that seem to tell stories of relationships, states of being, moods, war, and other human concerns. You may choose to read the whole thing linearly and intuit a narrative from the sequence, or you may read it texturally, occasionally including a “falling” from the central column for the sake of increasing the echoing quality of the piece and adding a layer of wordplay.

    (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

    Hannelen Leirvåg - 19.02.2013 - 20:19

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