Electronic poetry is very new to me and after reading more of these E-poems, i am starting to gain a greater appreciation for them. when we first started the class, i had no idea what electronic literature was. i thought there were going to be normal poems, just on the computer but it was nothing like that at all. you actually have to interact with electronic poetry. you are not just reading words and getting what you feel out of it. You have to sit there and play with the piece, explore it, almost like what you would do with an instrument if you were trying to play it for the first time. The more poems you play with, the better you come at interpreting them. the first poem that i decided to view was "sky" by Mitchell Kimbrough. first there is a black screen and the title of the poem pops up, then it proceeded to go to a black screen again where the words "for my friends" appeared. then the image of a night sky appeared. it started off with the moon starting to slowly rise out of the tree line and the soft voice of norah jones comes on singing her song "Don't know how". as the moon gets higher and higher in the sky, the stars start to come out one by one and the sky starts to get darker. as the moon proceeded to rise higher into the sky, the sky got darker and darker. a few words pop up on the screen one by one and they read, Fragile little didn't might have. as soon as those words leave the screen the black sky starts to over come the trees. then three more words come up, could've, little almost. the tree line disappeared a little more then it says (sweet something) in parentheses then almost had, didn't, and wont appear. now the tree line disappears completely and you are left with a black starry sky. then it says Always tomorrow though, always, a little, almost, might have, next time, then it says (next time). after that happens the screen changes and a little flower pops up. the pedals one by one slowly fall off and float to the bottom of the screen. then the poem ends on a black empty screen. this poem was not an interactive poem but it was definitely a meaningful one. i feel that this poem has a very deep meaning but it is also very straight forward as to what it is trying to say. this poem would not be the same at all without the electronic elements, if i were to read those words on a piece of paper, it would still make sense to me and i would understand what the poem is trying to say but i feel like it would not have the power it does with the music and imagery that goes along with it. even without the sound the poem is completely different.when the poem starts off saying "for my friends" it is pretty obvious that she is trying to reach out to her friends with this poem. the poem starting off in the dusk right before the moon rises is the hope that the author will be there and as the moon raises, it gets darker because the almosts and didn'ts start to come out. it seems like the Creator of this e-poem is apologizing to their friends for not being there, and never following through with things. the sky getting darker and darker seemed to symbolize the creators feelings. as more and more of the almosts, next times, and tomorrows build up, it gets darker and darker. that could symbolize his emotions towards his actions of doing that to his friends and how every time he says those things ,they start to have less and less faith in him. i feel that the flower at the end dying symbolized his friendship dying because he never followed through on anything and he became a liar. in one part it said "theres always tomorrow" which to me symbolized giving up and failure. it meant alot to me because i feel like that sometimes. if you are always saying tomorrow and later, you are never going to get anything done or make anybody happy. when you become like that, you start to be allot less confident because you lose faith in yourself and always take the easy way out. i feel that this was a very simple but expressive piece and without the electronic elements, it would not be as powerful at all. the other poem that i decided to talk about was Nine:puzzling through several lives. i do not know what it was but this is my favorite piece of electronic literature that i have looked at so far. it starts off with eight blocks with random pictures on them and one blank spot in the middle. the pictures appear to be a face, a map, and a letter. to start reading the poem you have to move one of the blocks into the blank spot and the text appears in the new blank spot and reads"born Edward guthrie, seventeenth, December, nineteen sixty seven," then as you move another block it says "reborn, Jason Edward Lewis, twenty seventh, July, nineteen seventy". that right there was the first sign to me that this man is puzzled about who he is. the way this electronic poem was put together could not have been more perfect for the meaning that it is trying to convey. the man who wrote created this poem seemed to be very confused to where he came from. he knew his race but he did not really know what to make of it because he was not raised by either of those cultures. in the introduction he talked about how "a Cherokee woman and an Island man produced a brown baby who was then raised by white folks". he was half Cherokee and half Indonesian but he did not really feel like he was anything. he seemed to feel lost. the way he portrayed his feeling of being confused and lost with the puzzle was genius. it was organized but abstract at the same time. it was in order of a grid but it was all different confusing parts of his life that seemed to all make up his life. the puzzle had a total of thirteen pictures all together that you could make out of the pieces you were given and they all were important in some way. there was a map of Indonesia, there was nature, there were the hills of California, there was a picture of his face, etc.the text only version of this poem gave me a good understanding of what he was trying to say but the puzzle solidified it. the missing block really gave the piece a good meaning because it helped you understand his lost and empty feeling about who he really is. i feel that this E-Poem was a great example of good electronic literature because he used the electronic elements to better portray the message he was trying to give. that is why i feel that nine:puzzling through several lives was a great piece of electronic literature.

My initial response to e-poetry

My initial response to e-poetry based on the pieces assigned so far is that I was not expecting this class to be what it is. I had no idea what I was signing up for when I registered for this class but after seeing the first assignment, I am glad that I did. On the first day of class, I thought that it was going to be old poetry just typed and posted on the internet. Now after reading the first assignments, I realized that this class is going to be a lot different than I expected. The way that the poetry is expressed through the internet is actually pretty interesting. It gives the poems a whole different feeling than if they were just read. I read the last cigarette three times before viewing the action poetry. Once I watched that, I felt complete different feeling from the poem than I got from reading it. It seems like it makes it easier to express the meaning of the poem because instead of just having the words to paint a picture in your head, you have visualizations to actually show you what you are reading about. One thing I can say is that I understood the last cigarettes meaning more than the nine and the mermaid. Those two were a little more confusing but I’m sure over the semester, I’ll be better at interpreting these poems. I am very excited for the rest of the semester and am looking forward to seeing what else we will be learning about.