CoverWeb Overview: Hypertext Fiction and Poetry
"
t was a dark and stormy website..."
This issue's CoverWeb explores the use of hypertext fiction and poetry, both as textual resources and as creative exercises in the classroom.
Hypertext Poetry
Cheryl Ball, in Heading South, provides a vision of hypertext poetry that interweaves the lexia and images of three individual poems into a nearly infinite series of readings, essentially allowing the reader to create entirely new poems based upon the links he or she chooses to follow. A different vision of hypertext poetry is provided by Sadie Cornell, in her Honors project (completed under the mentorship of Donna Reiss), Understanding a Vision: What is Hypertext? . Cornell's vision provides a single lexia containing the entire poem, but the text of the poem contains many links to outside sources, thus infusing the poem itself with a sense of the author's notion of possible intertextual readings.Another approach to hypertext poetry is also described by Ted Nellen in the CW99 Online discussion of hypertext. He describes a series of recursive haiku, connected together with hyperlinks; to see an example of "Hypertext Haiku," visit Ted's Cyber English class at http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/28.html.
Hypertext Fiction
J.J. Runion provides an example of a course which uses hypertext fiction as a focal point--both as texts to be read and texts to be written--in HyperRhetoroids: An Undergraduate Course in the Rhetoric of Hyperfiction. Also discussing hypertext fiction, Larry J. Clark discusses his students' reactions to reading hypertext fictions in Hyper-What?: Some Views on Reader Discomfiture with Hypertext Fiction. And Michelle Rogge Gannon, in Creative Writing Steps Inside a Virtual Jar, describes "what happens when a bunch of mostly non-English majors publish a literary e-zine in a creative writing class," highlighting her initial steps into delivering fiction via the web.Finally, John Barber's, Cybernetic Engines provide an intriguing array of computer programs which can be used to help writers generate texts. Perhaps just the first step in the ultimate merging of man and machine as symbiotic creative forces. . . .
On the Nature of Hypertext
Also in this coverweb is an online discussion held as part of the Computers and Writing Online Conference of 1999, Hypertext is Dead. In this discussion, noted hypertext scholars and participants in the online conference session discuss the nature of hypertext itself.
Hypertext Fiction and Poetry Resources
- Hyperizons http://www.duke.edu/~mshumate/hyperfic.html
- This site includes links to hypertext fiction, hypertext theory and criticism, class projects and more. By Michael Shumate, fiction writer, and archivist/manuscripts cataloger at Duke's Special Collections Library.
- Carolyn Guyer's "Web Hyperfiction Reading List" from _Feed Magazine_ http://www.feedmag.com/95.09guyer/95.09guyer_sample1.html
- This is an annotated reading list, featuring individual authors and collaborative hypertext works.
- xnihilo.com xnihilo.com
- "xnihilo is about writing and reading. self-publishing & hypertext & community & exploration - some buzzwords to flow in and out of your head... why don't you tell me a story?"
CoverWeb Contributions: Abstracts
- HyperRhetoroids: An Undergraduate Course in the Rhetoric of Hyperfiction
- by JJ Runnion
- "In the Fall of 1999, I taught a course called "HyperRhetoroids: The Rhetoric of Hypertext." Students read hypertext fiction and poetry, analyzed a variety of "texts," and created web-sites to show the results of their efforts. This brief hypertext is a narrative about the design, assignments, and results of that course."
- Heading South
- by Cheryl Ball
- "The three poems in this hypertext, "Ritual," "Moving List," and "The Lynching," are interlinked. The graphics that appear at the bottom of each textual lexia are the links leading to successive lexias. While, for the most part, one picture represents one poem (as seen below), sometimes a representative graphic will not link to its respective poem, but to another poem or a captioned photo. The captioned photos (or photo lexias) are presented as subtext for the poetry."
- Understanding a Vision: What is Hypertext?
- by Sadie L. Cornell (with Donna Reiss)
- "This Honors Mentorship project examined literary hypertexts for their possible uses in English composition and literature classes as well as to provide recommendations for instructional applications of literary hypertexts and for student development of hypertexts."
- Creative Writing Steps Inside a Virtual Jar
- by Michelle Rogge Gannon
- "What happens when a bunch of mostly non-English majors publish a literary e-zine in a creative writing class?"
- Hyper-What?: Some Views on Reader Discomfiture with Hypertext Fiction
- by Lawrence James Clark
- "After several years of writing, reading, and introducing college students to hypertext fiction and poetry, I have found one of my biggest challenges to be trying to convince students that I am not punishing them by assigning hypertext works as course readings, and that they can indeed find some sort of aesthetic pleasure in reading these works."
- Cybernetic Engines
- by John F. Barber
- "These cybernetic engines use creative technology to promote the development of higher level writing skills, especially in fiction or poetry writing classes."
- Hypertext is Dead (Isn't it?): An Excerpt from the 1999 Computers and Writing Online Conference
- featuring Susan Elaine Antlitz, Collin Brooke, Nick Carbone, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Kathy Fitch, James A. Inman, Lennie Irvin, Michelle Kendrick, Steve Krause, Ted Nellen, Albert Rouzie, Greg Siering, Geoffrey Sirc, Greg Ulmer, and Anne F. Wysocki
- A discussion of the nature of hypertext, held as part of the online discussion portion of the Computers and Writing '99 Online Conference, which took place March 1 through June 7, 1999.
vol. 4 Iss. 1 Fall 1999