Week 6: Lily Poljacik

After exploring interactive poetry through these week’s readings, I learned a lot more about the poetic process and how it can be improved or changed through the use of digital literature techniques. Interactive poetry requires its readers to engage with the material in order to unfold and modify the poetic experience; typically using coding, animation, or other multimedia elements. In chapter 5, Rettberg talked about some of the different forms of interaction a poem can have. We’ve spent a good amount of time working with hypertext, so it was nice to see how that intersects with poetry too, as well as generative poetry. As with other forms of digital literature, the ability for multiple endings or combinations was really fascinating, but something I especially liked with applying these techniques to poetry is that it further emphasized how poetry can be interpreted in multiple ways. Poetry as a form of literature has usually allowed for multiple interpretations, but adding additional layers to the piece through hypertext really makes it even more complex and engaging. 

I chose to explore "The Dreamlife of Letters" by Brian Kim Stefans, as mentioned in Chapter 5. I attempted to try a few other programs he had mentioned but I had a difficult time finding working versions of them. As I ran the poem by Brian Kim Stefans, it definitely took me a minute to adjust to the style. I honestly thought it was a really cool program and I loved the way that the words interacted with each other, as well as how you had to infer some of the words although they were missing letters. I am not entirely sure what I actually learned or gained from the program itself, but regardless I ended up watching it for a long time, trying to follow the words as they expanded upon themselves in a neverending fashion. I would say that this was a cool example of interactive poetry, but if I was trying to figure out what the meaning or interpretation was of it, I would have no clue.