To begin, while I can read in Spanish sometimes my overall understanding is just not there. It’s nonexistent sometimes. But regardless, I wanted to try this piece. Giselle made a helpful suggestion via email on translating the text with google translate. Which is what I did. I found not everything was able to translate. Not because google didn’t work but because this piece had a lot of clicking around, my computer would not allow me to copy at most times because of the fact that it would just start moving things around.

But, once I finally got something to translate so I would fully understand, I was excited. For instance this was one of the things I was able to translate;

“Te busqué más allá de la memoria, en los rincones que sólo nosotros conocemos, y no te vi.
Sólo vi, en los rincones, en la negrura de los rincones antes iluminados, el negro de tu ausencia, el dolor sin fin que sólo se puede sentir. Te busqué en los rincones de la noche.”

José Luís Peixoto / Te me moriste

“I looked for you beyond memory, in the corners that only we know, and I didn't see you.
I only saw, in the corners, in the blackness of the previously lit corners, the black of your absence, the endless pain that can only be felt. I looked for you in the corners of the night.

This was interesting, at first read, I was like he is possibly talking about someone he misses, maybe a lover. Then I read it the second time, and I thought how dark looking in the corners of the night could be, and I thought maybe he is talking about a sleep paralysis demon too. But I’ll keep my thoughts light and assume he was talking about someone he misses who has left or left him.

This piece was very interesting and I feel like most of the time, this piece was talking about family and referring to maybe specific family members. I liked how these was also a photo album that was included to show the mother and children and describe features that were passed down.

I’m assuming that this piece was sort of a digital scrapbook/diary of memories and a tribute to family. This piece was very nice to read and very nice interactive touch that wasn’t overwhelming or confusing.

Hi no blog post this week but you can read my thoughts on Dan Waber’s piece, A kiss here!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1poWJU5xi7D2mM7sG788_tUSdFHWKWJbyI7qhHcc7B44/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you! xx

I like to first say what a unique experience of poetry this is. I never heard of this style before but I am glad I did. I loved how the music played as the reader basically reads the poetry. I assume just like its stated in the statement that the music is paired for the poetry. I feel just like they do in movies/shows it is important to find the right tone that fits the scene, in this instance, it would be a perfect song that suited the poem.

When I first clicked over the poem I had no idea what was happening. The music does not play for long and if it stops as you are reading you have the option to play it again. After the second time I had muted my computer not because I hated the music but for a second there was a lot happening on screen that I felt I didn’t want to miss anything. Kind of like when you are driving and you turn down the music to find a street or place; same thing. The poems are in Chinese but if you hover over certain letters you get the English translation. The screen has little black dots that align with the poem itself. They jump around, at first I wasn’t sure that when the dots move that was what I had to read and follow those dots but maybe they are just there and moving around to signify that there is translation.

Anyways, after reading and regenerating a few times I came across a few different poems, well a lot actually. I’m not sure how I was suppose to read them to be completely transparent and maybe that’s because they are suppose to be read in the original language? Or maybe I am just simply reading them wrong. But I look forward to the presentation to get a better feel and see what I was doing wrong. Overall, I found this interesting and I would like to learn it.

Letters to X was a fun and sentimental read. At first I was sort of expecting to read letters to an actual ex from one writer. But before reading I read the preview of what the Elit would actually be centered around and it grabbed my attention. Knowing that these were all collections of letters to someone, anyone was fun to read. Most of the time my mind wanted to think these letters were romantic. But the more that I read, the more I saw that wasn’t the case. Some of these letters didn’t all seem romantic even though they mentioned the word love. Some of them I assumed were letters to friends, mom or dad, siblings, and partners.

When I first started to read, I realized there was the handwritten version as well as the typed version. Which I am happy about. It’s not that I can’t read in cursive but the messy text almost made it kind of harder to read. Then I noticed there were blank lines through the text. At first I thought things were gone in order to maybe protect the privacy of the person writing the letter. It wasn’t towards half way reading the letters I got curious to see if the blank spaces did anything. I moved my mouse over the spaces and saw nothing, so I clicked the spaces to then find out I could type in the blanks. So I went back to reading the letters again. I read them slowly and carefully as I placed my own words in the blank to create the same or now a new version of the letter.

I enjoyed this piece because it was sentimental and cute in my opinion. And I liked how I was kind of able to also create my own letter to X. Here’s what I did.

I found the readings in, “Blackout Poetry Tool” to be interesting. At first, I just went through the readings as so. Read the stories of what it seemed to be mainly centered around family history or the story of the writers immediate family, more specifically his dad and himself. Once I got through the readings, I was confused. Where was the electronic literature component of it? Usually other readings were more interactive. Well I was wrong. You can kind of almost miss it if you’re not paying enough attention.

On the sides of the text where it’s labeled “thesis” and so forth, in subtle text there is instructions of the electronic literary part of it. You where either selecting, or the “bot” is selecting the words for you. When I was selecting, I kind of just played around with the system and selected random words to feel what was electronic about this. But I didn’t notice much or maybe I wasn’t aware of what was actually happening.

When the bot was able to chose the words from the reading for me, I noticed not a pattern but maybe a poem was being created? For instance, In the last reading, Visual I noticed when looking at all the blackout words that the bot chose for me came out to read;

For of to thing man beaten alone cooked man helplessly had

Not sure if this is meant to be coded or if this is in some way a poem in itself. Regardless I found it interesting but I didn’t want to spend too much time thinking of it and making it into something it’s not. But I would like to know what was the purpose and meaning of this?

I found the Elit readings of High Muck a Muck to be my favorite thus far. I am a huge poetry fan so being able to walk through the readings of more and more poetry was quite enjoyable. My favorite section as I was navigating my way through all the readings was Canada. In Canada, there were quite a few poems that liked. One in particular that stood out the most to me was,

“Trust ugly words

To show how heavy

Beauty.”

This one was interesting. It was also the first little poem that was introduced in the Canada section. I believed it was to be written by FW. Like the rest of them. This Canada section of Elit seemed to me to be little poems of advice. Each blue dot you clicked on were also some other little poems that were short, but straight to the point and impactful. Seemed to be little reminders of advice, or at least that’s how I took it. Overall, I really enjoyed this Elit and reading through the thoughtful poems.

Well to start off, I don’t have many thoughts. And when I try to think of one, I still can’t. In all honesty, I just read a whole bunch of things but I am not sure what I read? I first started off my work with reading Jessica Pressman article on Navigating Electronic Literature. Basically, in short terms she discusses how navigating through this style of literature is really just reading until you get to a link, like a hyperlink and clicking on that to access more literature; and so forth. Well that’s exactly what Twelve Blue was. I started off by clicking one, which opened me to a whole new world of different text stories that contained links in the middle or end of the passages. Those links, led to more passages to read.

Like I mentioned previously, I really don’t know what the heck I read. As I navigated through each passage it was like whole complete new thought and story. I guess all these stories make up one whole big Twelve Blue Story? I’m assuming. Well some of them made sense. Like the doctor passage. Little weird, but it made sense. But there were other stories were there were no names mentioned but the text would mention a “her.” But that “her” was never expressed who or the name. Then briefly in one of the passages twelve blue was referred to as twelve oceans I think. So I am assuming the entire purpose of the stories is centered around the oceans? Or bodies of water? But I might also be getting off complete topic here and missing the whole purpose of the passages. There were also two mentions of rides. Starting to think that was a metaphor or a subliminal message of some sort. Because what the heck was up with the rides and people riding them. And why did we as readers need to know that? All very strange.

In conclusion, I really don’t know what I just read. All I can really say is that I read a whole bunch of little stories that made no sense as they seemed to be cut offs from a more detailed story. Or maybe those were the cliff notes of the summarized version of a bigger text that also made no sense. In better words, nothing made sense. I read, but I don’t know what I read. Kind of felt like I was dreaming all these stories? Because that’s kind of how dreams feel or at least for me.

My name is Julie but ever since I was a kid everyone around me would always call me Jules. Which is why I included both names because government wise, I am Julie. But personal level wise, I’m Jules. I am twenty five years old. I graduated in 2020 with a bachelors degree in communication. For two years-ish. I’ve been on a self quest journey of who the heck I was and what the heck I wanted to do. I wouldn’t say I figured it out, but I would say I sort of have an idea and I am on that path for that idea. Anyways, enough with the boring stuff I’ll share some fun things!

I have two dogs and a cat (they all get along great)

I am Spanish (can be interesting I guess)

I wrote a book when I was 16 (wouldn’t recommend reading it though, personally)

I love taking film photos, it is a huge passion of mine

I love old films (dirty dancing is at the top of my list)

I love music I will listen to pretty much anything

Celebrity crush- Harry Styles but that’s a given

And last but not least I want to write more (better) books and also one day maybe be a professor myself!