Patchwork Girl

While learning about hypertexts in our English 230 class we had read a hypertext called Patchwork girl written by Shelley Jackson. A hypertext is a “text composed of blocks or words linked electronically by multiple paths, chains, or trails in an open-ended, perpetually unfinished textuality described by the terms link, node, network, web and path.” All of these “unfinished textuality are described in patchwork girl, it is seen when you press on a link and it brings you to a new page or when you click on the images as well. A hypertext allows the reader to explore different pages at different times, so each person is able to have their own experience with Patchwork girl and may not even visit areas in the hypertext as a whole, because each person experience is different.

In this story Shelley Jackson is portrayed as a character named Mary Shelley, and she is the women who “patches” Patchwork girl together. She takes many bones and pieces of people’s bones and sews them onto Patchwork girl and makes her human, once she received all her pieces, and then she would become whole. Mary was the creator of Patchwork girl and was a mother figure to her as well, no matter where Patchwork girl went, she still somehow tried to find a way to connect to Mary and ask her for her advice. Patchwork is overall about her going off and trying to find out her own identity and trying to hide behind her past without telling people about it. You can see in the picture above that was where Patchwork girl got some of her bones. And these pictures are all around in the Journal category in Patchwork girl.

picture of the story

picture of the journal icon in the five categories

When you start patchwork girl you will see a naked women, and then once you click on her, a new screen will pop up with the title, “Patchwork Girl or a Modern Monster”, which is shown in the very beginning of this blog, underneath the title you will then see five different categories titled, as shown below, “a Graveyard”, “a Journal”, “a Quilt,” “a Story”, and “& broken accents.” Each of these categories is going to show you the story inside the lives of Patchwork girl and this hypertext two of which are shown above. When you click on each of these categories and read what they are about you will then be able to understand that each of these categories are “patched together” to form the hypertext that you are reading and I think that is the theme throughout this whole hypertext, everything is pieced together in this hypertext. For example, “the skeleton of Patchwork girl is the base that supports the whole “body” of the hypertext, ad while it may look differently on the outside, inside they are very similar.”

Each of these categories plays a significant role in learning about Patchwork girl and understanding how the hypertext is “patched” together. The graveyard category is about the putting together of Patchwork girl, there you will be able to meet some of the people who’s parts are a part of her and learn about their lives and what had happened to them. You also learn what parts were used to create her and you are able to put them together. In this section you are going to read, “If you want to see the whole, you will have to piece me together yourself,” and that is exactly what you are doing throughout this whole hypertext up to the end. You are learning what body parts were used and how exactly she was put together and you then learn how she feels about her body. For example, when reading this hypertext I learned where her arms and legs came from and then later on in the hypertext she was losing a foot and had to sew herself back together, and later she kept losing body parts and had to keep putting herself back together. And that is the whole, without reading all of the passages I would not have been able to learn what exactly had happened to her when she was learning “who she was”. And I believe that is what she meant when she said, “you will have to piece me together yourself,” which is shown above in the picture, because as the reader, we are doing a lot of work with what exactly is happening and if we do not get to a part then we probably did not end up putting that piece together and then we are not learning more about her. As the reader we have a choice in what links to press and where the story is going to go and that is where we are going to piece Patchwork girl together.

In the other categories is where you really learn about her, in the journal, broken accents, a quilt and a story are mostly similar, in the journal you see Mary Shelley’s reaction to Patchwork Girl as well as learn about the interaction with each other. There you learn about their intimacy that they shared in laying in the bed together and when Mary did not judge the monster of her scares, which are two images shown above. In the story though is where you learn about her adventures to America with Chancy and what happens when she is there as well as the steps that she took to disguise herself, to hide to scars of her past. When Patchwork girl was on the boat to America she had to conform to the “women ways” and was not able to run around as much but instead she had to be on her best behavior. She had women objects in her purse such as a: hanky, but once she had gotten to death valley she decided that she did not want to conform and that she was going to go her own way and become her own person. In those categories is where you will learn this as well are where you will learn a lot about Patchwork girl and the struggles that she has when her body slowly falls apart and when she has to sew herself together. When this happens she tries any way that she could to get in contact with Mary but nothing seemed to work. When you read the rest of the categories you learn a lot about her as a whole and how and what is happening to her through her journey and the actions that she has taken to hide her scars as well as finding out her own identity. All of these characters show us, the reader how this hypertext is “patched together” and in order to know and understand everything, you have to really read and understand what is going on, because each piece makes this hypertext complete.

While reading another hypertext, My body-a Wunderkammer I saw a lot of similarities, the obvious one is that they are written by the same author, Shelley Jackson. And while reading it the lexia’s are similar because in order to get to the next lexia you had to click a body part. And that is the same with Patchwork girl, because in order to understand what she was going through you had to click a body part to explain what was going to happen next. Also they each had a sense of “not belonging”, in patchwork girl she did not want to be in her body because of the scars and because she did not like the past, being put together with other peoples parts, but with my body she did not belong because of the way she looked like as well, she had large muscles and was tall for her age in her adolescent years, so she was made fun of and that is what Patchwork girl was scared about, she did not want to be made fun of or looked down upon so she had disguised herself. But in my body, she had conformed to the natural women, her mother told her to shave her armpits, so she did, and her friends told her to shave her toes, so she did that too. She just wanted to feel like she belonged so she listened to everyone even if she didn’t want to do those things. Patchwork girl dressed like the modern women and carried the womanly items as well. They each behaved calmly even though they just wanted to run out and be themselves. But they could not do what they wanted because they were trying to create an identity and they thought that identity would have to conform to the rest of the world’s image. Each of these similarities shows a lot with the way hypertexts work, they each have a problem and overtime they are trying to fix it, the main similarity is that when you click on a body part it has a different story to tell, whether it is about you or someone else, each of it is very important.

With Patchwork girl, she just wanted to find out who she was until she started falling apart and then she realized that she already knew who she was. I believe that Patchwork girl was an amazing hypertext, I learned a lot about it and understood exactly where she was coming from. I loved all of the themes and the way that she had portrayed everything together I thought that it was very useful and effective. I believe that if you have not purchased Patchwork girl yet, then you should because it is an amazing experience with hypertext and it taught me a lot about it and in the picture above shows all of the history that I went through with this hypertext.

Sources used:

http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/jackson__my_body_a_wunderkammer.html

http://www.atlantisjournal.org/ARCHIVE/28.1/2006Sanchez-PalenciaCarazo_AlmagroJimenez.pdf

I also used class notes and discussions and a quote Parker said while we were in a group.

My own Interactive Fiction Piece

My Interactive Fiction production was about a teacher who was just beginning to work in a daycare which is full of toddlers, meaning two year olds. There are four girls and four boys giving you a total of eight. One boy as well as one girl was the characters that I had used throughout this piece. The males name was Kevin and the females name was Sam. The whole reason why I made this Interactive Fiction the way that I did was because I wanted to show people how much work it is to work with two years especially when one of them gets hurt. I have been working in the toddler room at Eastern Connecticut’s daycare for just about two years and I have had many experiences of the one that I shared in IF. My basic plan was to set up a normal morning that a teacher may have had and explain what a teacher may have to do if a child got hurt. I wanted to show the setup of the room, and try to give a brief description of the room that the children were entering and what they would do when they directly went into the classroom, take off their coats. I want to make things sensory and have the player be able to pick up things as well as bring them to people, which I was able to do in this piece. I only know how to use IF a little bit so it would not have been in depth but I wanted my player to understand what they were supposed to do as well as where they were supposed to go after certain events took place. I wanted to add open and close doors to my Interactive fiction piece, but I was not able to figure it out and make it work with the program.

I thought that making interactive fiction was the hardest computer program that I have ever worked on. It made me feel like I was computer illiterate. I am okay with computers but this was way too hard. Without an example by my side, using it for guidelines, I don’t think I would have been able to work this out. I was not able to figure out all of the relevant capabilities especially not on my own. I used the help files text support and a reading that we had last class which is called the Inform7 handbook, below at the end of this paragraph there is a picture of the page where this handbook is at. I also had the help of my professor, without her help, I probably would not have been able to figure out how to make a character a character as well as giving the ice to Kevin. Those were the trickiest things for me to figure out. Doing about ten minutes in an Interactive piece took a very long time to do and was very frustrating. I use computers a decent amount of time and this program was very different than anything that I am used to. It is a whole new experience.

Without this software I would not have been able to make a Interactive Piece and I think that the piece that I did, (even though it is nothing like other IF’s that I have seen), a decent job making rooms, having things that are within my room and bringing ice to a character. Without IF I would have never been able to do this, and I think it is interesting to learn about, even if it is incredibly hard to figure out. I realized while working on this piece that I wanted to talk about a lot of different things and I became very creative at one point in my thinking, but I could not figure out how to incorporate it into my piece. I wanted to have my kids open a door and take off their shoes, but that was way too complicated to figure out in the beginning of using IF. I think if I learn the manual of IF then I will be able to figure out a lot more information and how to do a lot more techniques that can be interesting and will bring my toddler room IF to life, which is shown below.

There were a lot of things that frustrated me while working with IF. First of all, I had an extremely difficult time working with this program. This had to have been the hardest concept to grasp with a computer program. There are so many details that you had to put out and you had to make sure that each concept that you wanted to talk about would be grasped not only by the reader but also by the computer. You had to type to the computer in black and then to the reader in blue, and you had to make sure that each time that you are doing this, that the wording would be understood by the Interactive guidelines. This was not easy to do and the attempts that I made were extremely difficult to figure out. When I thought that I finally got it right and that my piece was going to work, I waited one minute and well something went wrong and now I had to go and fix the problem. I think the hardest part though was trying to figure out which way to type thing to make sure that the IF program will understand what you are trying to tell it, most of the time it did not understand. I felt like it was a whole new way of talking, and it was just special to IF. You have to literally spell things out in order to get them to work and you have to define what things are like teacher, or boy and girl. And I think that is the hardest part because you really have to pay close attention to everything you are going to say or do and if you do not, then it will take you a long time to figure out what you did wrong later. While I was doing my Interactive Fiction piece I kept thinking to myself saying, “I give the people who make IF a lot of props for putting all the time that they do in,” because from doing it myself I have learned that it is not easy at all to create. It is the hardest computer program that I have ever worked with and even after working on it for a very long time, I still feel like I don’t understand a great deal of what I am supposed to do, because there are so many little things that are needed to be done to make a sentence work, and if you mess up one thing in that sentence then the whole thing will not work and light up, and then it’s back to the drawing board. This first picture is a picture of a mistake that I had made over and over and was trying to figure out what exactly I needed to do to make this room work, and the second picture is when I finally figured out how to fix it.

I realized that IF is really different than writing a short story, because you have the idea that you want to use, and now you have to tell it to the computer and the reader to make sure that it is clear to them what exactly you are trying to tell. I think that I would have rather had written a story because it would have been easier to do and wouldn’t have been so much work to try to tell the computer what exactly I wanted it to know. But then again, I think that IF had made my piece more interesting and outgoing because you are able to make different rooms and give descriptions of a character right there so that the reader could examine him or her. And also, I liked the fact that I was able to make different rooms and tell the computer exactly what I wanted it to know in order for it to explain to the reader. I have mixed feelings towards this because I think that I would want to do IF instead of writing a short story but then again, I do not know how to use IF exactly to the point of where I know what to say exactly where I should say it, and that is when it gets complicated, tricky and makes me not want to participate in it. The picture below show a beginning stage after I finally got all of the tricks and complications out, when you press go, this is what the screen goes to and then you can play your game just as if you are the player.

Finally, I liked learning about IF and all of the gadgets that could be used for this game as well as the way you could use this game for stories and presenting things, but when this class is over, I do not think that I will be using this program again, because it is a lot of work and I still do not understand it, even after I have put hours and hours of time in it. If I understood the information of this game and how each thing works I would continue with it, but I do not understand it, so I do not think I will be continuing with IF after this class.

Galatea and Interactive Fiction

In our English 230 class we are working on Interactive Fiction, which is a game that is used by words to describe what is going on during certain events. In class we worked on three interactive fiction pieces; “All the Roads,” Galatea,” and “Whom the Telling Changed.” Out of these three interactive pieces, I had thought Galatea was easier for me to understand, and so I choose to write about it in my blog today. In this blog I am going to talk about two articles, one being Twisty Little Passage by Montfort and the other one is Interactive Fiction as Literature by Buckles.


Galatea, is a stone women who the reader, meaning you, is having a conversation with, the reader asks many questions and listens to her life. During this interactive piece you learn a lot about this character and the experiences that she has gone through, when she was stone. When you are talking to Galatea, there are many commands that are happening, when she types to you, it is called an output, because the computer is writing the text, but when you are writing the text, it becomes an input which Montfort discusses. And that gives you the back and forth conversations. These commands happen all throughout the Interactive piece.

When you begin this piece, you start off with a prologue, which is shown in the screenshot above, which is a description of the IF world given before there is any opportunity for the instructor to give a command, which Montfort talks about in her article, and it explains what is going on or about to happen. Here he talks about you, the reader(Montfort), walking over to meet Galatea and the first like she says, “They told me you were coming," and this as well gives you a brief description of where she is "sitting on a pedestal." There are many ways that you can play this game and many opportunities that are given to talk to her and ask her questions. When she talks about her life, listen to her and ask her questions about it, and also ask her any questions that you may feel could help with the conversation. A lot of the questions I had asked were about her maker and the stone that she was made out of, and then later when she I believe was comfortable I asked about deeper connections, like family, friends, love, to see what she believed and her experiences with it. And then I told her my experiences with family, and how mine are different then hers. There is a word that I can describe this game by and it is a first date, you are getting to know her and it is personal, and you the reader are trying to keep her interested and keep talking.

When she keeps talking to you and you get her to open up and move to front profile, which you can see at the top of the screen, then you are doing a good job. In this image above, the view is one-quarter profile. And when I mean front profile, when you start the game, she is not looking at you, he back is to you, but when she gets more comfortable she slowly begins to turn and then finally if she is very comfortable she might even sit with you and the bonding will grow stronger. But that is only if you find the connections to her and if you ask the right questions at the right time. This whole interactive fiction piece is diegetic which means; anything that is a part of the world of the story, because Galatea does not go out of the story like a Extra-Diegetic, which is not a part of the story. By Montfort telling this it explains the setting of the story because it does not change at all, which is said above.

When you are talking to her you are in the same setting the whole time, but it feels like you could be somewhere else because of the descriptions. When she talks about the water and her master she brings you to where she was made and the descriptions almost make you feel like you are there.


This game took me a while to figure out what to say to get her to open up to me, and there are many different ways you can talk to her, there is a help guideline, if you type the word “Help” in then you will be able to read the command that was given and in there is a website that gives you a cheat-sheet which will help you with how you talk to her, which is shown in the picture above. All of these are ways that will help you further in the game, so that you do not get frustrated. Once you figure out all of these hints and Galatea opens up to you will see how the game works and soon enough you will be getting to the end of the game. You know the game is over when you get the words “restore”, “quite” or “restore” and these words are called directives as seen in Montfort’s article, which is shown in the picture below. When you get to these words you know that you finished the game or if you left on your own.

My personal opinion of this game is that it is both a game as well as a story. I think that it is a game because it is a date in my eyes, and I think that you are trying to win over her and get her comfortable enough to open up to you. And you get here by trying different techniques on her just like you would do on a date. It could also be a puzzle because when you learn something about Galatea you could be trying to put all the pieces of her life together to understand what exactly she has gone through, throughout her life. This is a good way to look at the game-like aspect because then you will be able to learn and listen to her and put everything together to get an initial theme, which in this story I feel could be Galatea being lonely, because she didn’t realy have any one to talk to, just people looking at her. And when you finish the whole piece then you will be able to figure out what you feel about her and her life.


In Buckles Article with the link at the end of this blog says that the If has roots in, counterparts in various kinds of literature. And Buckles is right because in this IF piece there are types of literature, it was like a story and there was no stopping in talking, there was always a way to think of something when you are talking to Galatea and to keep the conversation going. And it is literature as well as a game because when you are on a date with someone you just don’t think of it as a game or puzzle but it is trying to find the right words to say and what she is going to respond to you. When you are playing this game you know that actions have consequences as well as the choices that you make, and when you are on a date or in this case talking to Galatea you are going to going to try to make the best choices that you can with your words so that you can impress her. And when you are going through the story you are learning about the character Galatea as well as yourself, and without literature that would not have happened in this IF piece.

Bibliography for the articles mentioned above:
Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Fist MIT Press, 2003.

Buckes, Mary Anne. Interactive Fiction as Literature.

PowerPoint Software/Writer Response

While watching and reading electronic poetry, I never thought that I would have the capability to be able to create one of my own as well. Making an electronic poem is not easy, it requires, animation that flows with the description of the poem, sound that could possibly go with it as well, and images and creations that you will design. The only way I know how to use all of these creations is by going onto Microsoft PowerPoint and then start from there. Almost anyone can use this program, whether you are a computer expert to non-experienced with computers you can still use it, there are places where you can ask questions and it will walk you through the steps that you may need help with. While I was working on my animation that is what I had to do as well, because some things are difficult to understand while others may not be so bad. The poem that I wrote about was called sisters and was written by Shiv Sharma in importance of her sister, and when I had found this poem online I thought it would be perfect for my sister as well.

The visuals that I had used each have a specific meaning to this poem. The overall theme of this poem was sisters and I wanted pictures and details that my sister and I have done together and would have used. I searched my albums and choose recent and one older picture to show the audience about my sister and how I felt about her. I put each of the pictures with the text that I thought would fit it properly. For example, the saying “she doesn’t let you get, bored at family dealings; I had purposely put a picture of her and I being goofy on a day where my whole entire family was there taking pictures.


To me, this would show the audience that no matter what occasion it would be, something good and funny would come out of it, because my sister was around. I also used many other pictures and used them in that exact same way, to emphasize what was being said in the text. Another example could be, the saying “memories will last, miles and miles,” I put a funny picture of my sister and I, because it was a vacation that we had picked with my family, and that picture will always be remembered and is always talked about when our family talks about the past. I used these images in this poem because I thought that it would have a greater effect then finding pictures from clip-art. I thought that if I put each picture in a proper space then the reader would understand what my sister and I are like and what bonds we share together.


(The words on the right side of this image is all of the steps that was taken within this slide. It shows all of the animation that was portrayed within the words and the pictures. As you can see the image also shows a bunch of slides on the left, those slides are all of the other pictures/slides in my PowerPoint.)
1.
This image is from I-spring, it is a program where you can publish your PowerPoint and play it through. I captured a picture when I-spring was in progress and this is what it looks like. As you can see the words Beauty of a Dove are spread out and wide and that is because they do that right before it goes to normal in the PowerPoint, that is one of the animations, that was used for this slide.
2.

This picture shows the types of steps that were taken in the beginning. This is the fist slide of my powerpoint and there are only two different animations that I used, one for my sister and the other for the picture of my sister and I. When you go down to more slides though you will be able to see how many animations were used based on the right side of the bar when editing.

This software had opened up many capabilities that I didn’t even know of. For example, I never knew you could animate a picture on your page in PowerPoint let alone animate words as well. When I had used PowerPoint in the past I always just used the basic. Write down words, and add a colorful page in the background. When I was in class I finally realized how many creations you could really make with this process. I enjoyed having all of these creations very much because I felt like I was able to animate my own image as well as express what I was saying not only by words but by images as well. In a book or on paper you cannot express words in animation like you can do in PowerPoint. For example, when I was writing down a word in my “apart” I was able to animate each word showing that my sister and I will never be apart. And also I was able to animate pictures, so when I talked about something special, I then put a picture next to it. For example, in the poem it said, are worth much more than dimes. I then put a picture of dimes in the text and then when you saw the dimes, I made them vanish away. By having this animation, dramatizes what the author is trying to say and points out key terms that he or she may want the reader to catch upon and by having animation, it then draws that to the reader’s eye. You cannot do this on paper at all, you can have pictures but when you are using the electronic poetry it seems to bring your pictures to life.
1.
This image is of all of the animations that had to be done for one of the slides that I had animated. And it goes with the other picture above. As you can see there is a lot of animations that were used for this one slide, and with this animations you can make a picture go into the PowerPoint right after a word and before the PowerPoint begins again you can make it escape.
2.
These are the options that you will be able to choose from when you use Animations, this is what I had used to design all of my slides and to animate them.

The only thing about the animation is that it is very time consuming, if you have never done it before, there is a lot to do with the PowerPoint and animation. The first step is to log into PowerPoint and then hit animation, and press custom animation. Then you are going to put whatever words you want in the text box and highlight that would and press change, and then click your animation. It sounds really easy here, but when you are working on it, it could get difficult. Luckily there are help areas and a question box, where you can post your questions. Without the help of Professor Liu, at Eastern Connecticut for English 230, it would have been very difficult for me to understand where all of it is. I have been using PowerPoint for years, and I just learned last Wednesday that animation existed. If you have not tried it, please do because it is really interesting and fun. I thought that I had understood the material that was presented and I had used the animation well, with the help of my professor. I believe that the only thing that was tough was getting the hang of it, but after you animate one word or phrase then the rest will come easy. I thought that everything worked out perfectly for PowerPoint for me, if you do have troubles though like I have said above there are help areas to where they will fit your needs to what you may need to know.

In this electronic work, I really didn’t get too side-tracked. The only thing that I really enjoyed and got side-tracked with a bit was, drawing more and more images and finding out where I could put pictures in the poem to animate it more. I realized when I put a lot of pictures on one page that I was overdoing it a little bit and that I should delete some of the pictures that I had. By doing this I believe that it had then emphasized the pictures that should had been emphasized and left the other pictures alone. I think that electronic poetry was easier for me to write and design what I wanted to do with the poem, even though I did not write this poem, I think by having e-poetry and the designs made it easier for me to express what I wanted to by using the text that was given.

In conclusion, i think that these tools in PowerPoint are very helpful and that by learning about them is a very good idea. I have already used these tools in my math PowerPoint, and I just learned about it on Wednesday's class. By learning how to use animation you can design anything you really want with images that you want as well. It is very helpful and is a lot of fun as well.

Landscapes and Housing Problems

The e-poetry poem that I thought best suited this project was Landscapes. This poem was written by Bill Marsh. The start of this poem was designed very unique and in an interesting way, there are four unique and distinct pictures that are in the middle of the page followed by the name Landscapes and the authors name Bill Marsh.

There six types of interaction for the reader to be involved in, in this e-poetry poem. The first step is getting into the poem, and all you have to do is hit the word “LANDSCAPES” in the middle of the first page. Once you do this it then leads you to another page, Desert Drive in, starting off to where the poem begins. Or there is another way; you can just be able to click on the words on the left hand side of that page. Once you get to that page you are able to read the words that are passing by as well as look at the four different pictures represented a dive-in movie. You know to click on this because when your mouse is overlapping the icons it then turns from the color green to yellow. While you press the buttons on the left hand side of the page it will lead you to the different parts of the poem, where it explains what is going on and what is being said.

On the left side of the page there are five icons giving you places in the poem to go and listen to what the author has to say. There is: Desert Drive in, Variation on a Summer Theme, City by Moonlight, flags waving over a capitol, and Fog at Sunrise. When you click on one of these icons it then brings you to a separate page that is very colorful and has two sets of words that make a part of the poem. In Desert Drive in, it said: “I do not hide my face, and from the spitting insult.” But this becomes hard to read because the words are passing you by very quickly. There are other types of readings that are happening in the other icons but you must press them in order to see, if you do not click the icons then the interaction of the poem will not keep happening.
The next icon for this poem was Variation of a Summer Theme, in this image there are different types of pictures that are flashing when the page is up. The pictures all seem to represent the summer with the flowers along with happy children. The words on this page reads, “I have set my face like flint and I know that I shall not be put to shame.” Each of these sayings are talking about standing up for yourself and not letting anyone walk over you because you were hiding.

City by Moonlight and Flags waving over Capital are both similar. They both have images involving the cities and people who are in them. In the Moonlight image there are pictures of empty chairs and then someone holding a hand full of sand and letting it slip through their fingers. The captions or words used in this picture said, “I am not afraid of 10 thousands of people who have sent themselves against me.” This saying corresponds with the words because there are empty chairs and then someone who is standing by themselves or another picture shows a man walking, representing that they will stick up for themselves and that they are not afraid to be alone. The Flags waving over the Capital have people who look like they are in soldier’s outfits. The words say, “I will protect him because he knows my name, I will answer him when he calls to me.” And that is exactly what soldiers do when they are listening to their captain. There are two sets of different images, one showing the soldiers, who look like they are in a form to attack and the others look like people who are rioting the city.


The last section in this poem was Fog at Sunrise; you are able to look at this when you clicked that icon on the right side of the page. When you click on this icon you see one box for the image and it shows a car, band, and a television. And the saying says: I will bring them back from the depths of the sea. And the background image shows the sunset and a body of water, where they could bring them back.

In Landscapes many readers may think that it would be easy to read and to understand as well as interact with it, the only difficultly that could be found was reading the words to the poem. Because the poem’s words were passing by the page with small pillars in the middle, it then became difficult to read as well as understand.

In this poem there are many elements that were occurring, one main element was Symbiociation. This word tells me that there were a lot of symbols and tools that the author had used to make the reader understand what was going on in this poem. There was also Digital Poetry, which means that there were visuals and animations that were used within the poem. All of these elements were very important for the author to use to help the reader understand what he was trying to say. One last element used was Causing thinking, because you were not able to really see the words clearly, that made the reader/user think about what the author was trying to say and interpret with the pictures about what is going on.
Many readers/users may believe that the elements used were rather helpful with understanding the piece. Without the symbiociation then there would not have been a lot of interesting diagrams and/or symbols that would have been used. And if this author did not use Digital Poetry then there would have been no images, and the piece would have been rather dull. Some reader/users, may believe that causing thinking may have been extraneous in this piece because it became very difficult to understand the word of the poem and try to get and insight for what was being said.
If this piece had been written on paper rather than electronic poetry, then readers/users may not think that it would have been very intriguing. Without the pictures, the words would not have meant what they had in this form. When you were reading the words along with the pictures, the reader was then able to understand what the author was trying to say a little better. With that being said, electronic poetry was the best way to form this poem, it may have been a little difficult to read at times, but that difficulty is what drives people in to read it. I personally liked the electronic version of this poem.
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Housing Problems, a poem that was written by Roxanne Carter, starts off looking like a title to an article. When the user/reader clicks on HOUSING PROBLEMS by ROXANNE CARTER with your mouse, it will then direct you to another page where the poem actually begins. When you click on this icon, make sure that your computer will allow pop up and that you have Quick player. If you do not allow these options to happen, your full experience of this poem will not work.

When you get to this page, it does not look like a regular beginning to a poem. There will be 18 different pictures of women with houses in the background. Each box is separated from a thin white line that travels between the images of the pictures. Each of these women seems to portray a different facial expression as well as a different dark house in each of the backgrounds.

Once you look at all of the pictures, then the poem will become interactive with the user/reader. Click any of the pictures there, isn’t any real order, and when you do click, then a variety of options will happen. In some of the icons some of the elements in the piece would be a video, a story line, different windows with sayings, some words may be underlined, and when you click these words then a new element in the story will pop up. There is also, scattered dialogue, make your own poem, and some elements have 2 videos in one different window. No matter which video you choose, the poem is going to be intriguing and keep you lingering to find out what is really going on.

When you put your mouse over the first image and click the picture you will then be able the beginning of the poem. It starts off with a word saying en route, and then it turns into a video of a woman on the phone trying to dial a number. The woman goes on for about a minute and a half trying to dial a number and different phones were used.

An example of words that are underlined could be in the second picture. Click on it and then you will see two distinct boxes, one on the left and another on the right. In these boxes, words are cursing down the page, and when you see all of these words there a distinct ones that are underlined. When you click on these, then you will be able to see another window and look at another part of the poem.

When you click the fifth picture in, there will be six icon/pictures that will pop up. Many different categories will appear, a main one used will be animals. Roxanne uses many types of animals in this section as well as other factors. There are also words that say billiard room, or ball room, indicating different places in the house. For example, fireplace mantel, or even marble floor. Each of these are used to show the different types of categories these women fall on to.

When you click on the seventh picture you will be able to make your own poem or saying. There are seven different cursers in this element, and here you will be able to pick many different options. Under each of the seven categories there are words that can be used, when you use them you are able pull down on the white words that say, item lost in the fire, the three lies, library, treasure, the three secrets, tableware, and rules. I made my own and the image is below. This is a great interaction area for the reader or user because then you are able to create your own thoughts or feelings within the section of the poem and show where you want or think it should head to.

There are many more example, but I selected the most common of the 18 pictures that I saw. Some other elements in this poem included, conversations that the people had, pictures of women in houses, or with lights, and stories about a girl that lived in the house. All of these images are elements that made this poem come to life.

There are plenty of ways the reader/user can interact in this poem, and finding out how to interact was not very difficult. There are clues hidden within the poem, one being when you dragged the mouse over an object it will turn a different color then before, or there are words that are underlined where you click and they will bring you to a different element within the poem. Without this contact within the poem, I believe that this poem would not be where it is at now. All of this interaction is used so that you are able to click different parts of the story and learn them on your own and drawing your own conclusions.

This poem had everything that an e-poetry poem could have. It had all of the images, the multi-dimensions, sensory information that could convey a message to the reader. There were many; Poetry in Images, (a section that we had learned in class). This is where images and text merge together to form new vistas of meaning. When saying this, that is exactly what Roxanne had done, she had put all of these elements together to form one big poem and one big meaning. There were parts that would be called (Turning away), this is where lines change, into new lines. And in some of the examples that I talked about this is exactly what happened. Many words were going together in order to make up the element in the picture. There were many animations where you could see black and white videos, like it was in the olden days that showed you what type of house this could be or what the house had seen throughout the years. Finally there was a ton of symbiociation; elements, movement and navigation. This poem had everything giving us the total effect.

In order for the reader/user to get the full effect of this poem, the most essential element needed for this peace would be Symbiociation. When having this there is navigation, which was defiantly needed, animations that were a lot throughout the piece, and there were movements through every segment. Without this element the poem would have probably not been able to have everything, like it did. Something that may have seemed extraneous would have been the Turning away element, because it was very hard to see and grasp everything the author may have wanted to understand because the words were always moving or turning into new lines.

The user/reader would lose everything if the author just had this on paper. The whole dimensional volume and all of the elements combined is an essential part of this entire poem, without it the user/reader may not be able to understand and comprehend everything that there is to tell. You gain so much more with e-poetry because then you are able to interact with it and see pictures and visuals(videos) that may help you understand exactly what the reader is trying to say. I would defiantly like reading this poem electronically rather than on paper because you are able to have different choices and ideas. And with a paper based poem, it doesn’t give you the full extent of what this poem had given you.