Debbie's Blog for March 5

I like cake. And when I eat cake, I eat the cake first and then the icing because the icing is my favorite part.  I want to save the best part for last.  My "Cake Approach" works with how I approach life on a number of levels.  I usually do the bad stuff or the hard stuff first (get it over with) and then finish strong with something easy or enjoyable.  Electronic Literature has caused me to reverse my approach. Instead of working on the Hypertext Assignment, I focused on my Review piece.  I am reviewing Robert Kendall's electronic poem "Faith." I approached the poem from a variety of angles because I wanted to experience it through different lenses.  My piece combines animation and sound, so I turned the sound off and then played the piece with sound. It was amazing how influential a few organ notes or harp chords can be to words and meaning.  I enjoyed how Kendall layered the various elements of the piece from movement, diction, sound and others.  All the elements helped bring to life Kendall's meaning/understanding of faith and its value in life.  Though short, the piece is provocative.  I also enjoyed reading some of Kendall's articles about electronic literature.  In one he discussed the techniques and possibilities of electronic literature when applied to the future of writing poetry and novels.  He passionately described his frustration with reading the words on a page word or reading  poems aloud and how the experience was only half of the overall meaning.  Combining sound and motion with words allowed Kendall to mean more and reach a larger audience than ever before.  I'm looking forward to presenting, though I have a few kinks still left to fix.

The Hypertext Assignment keeps evolving in my mind and I struggled this weekend to commit to one idea.  But I think I finally have.  I plan to have a variety of famous/infamous female literary characters give advice on love, marriage, family, money, men...while sitting at a sewing circle.  Each will be creating an individual sampler while providing advice on various topic to a new member to their group.  The heroins and villains that I am familiar with in the books I teach I felt could provide some interesting, valuable and possible disturbing insights into life.  I have a couple of responses written by a couple of the sewing ladies, but I still have a long way to go.  I've been saving the insights in a folder on open-office, but I don't know how to transfer them to Google Sites.  I have a lot of questions about the linking and hypertexting element of the assignment, so I welcome any advice.