A New Experience in Poetry

Unlike most poems that we know of or have read, Deena Larsen's hypertext poem “Firefly” allows the reader a seemingly endless array of possibilities from which to choose.  As the reader, you are in control of morphing Larsen's words into a scramble of beautiful prose.  What I love so much about this work is that by incorporating hypertext, “Firefly” is able to encapsulate, more so than ever before, what true poetry is.  As stated by 20^th century poet Dylan Thomas, poetry is most simply the creative act of using language.  And what we are able to do in Larsen's “Firefly” is take her own language of expressions and then create from that an entirely new creative act of expression, in up to 180 different ways.  But what I love even more about this is that although there is a limit of 180 possible stanza combinations; consider the endless possibilities of meaning, symbolism and interpretation each one of these 180 poems allows for in one single literary work.  

In “Firefly,” Larsen's thoughts and emotions are represented in words on the screen, and like all poetry these expressions provide different meaning to each unique individual based on his or her own experience, beliefs, and opinions.  But what Larsen’s hypertext poem is able to do, unlike other conventional written poetry, is provide the area needed to take these personal interpretations to the furthest extreme by allowing viewers to recompose her own lyrics to fit the mood of the reader.

While the use of hypertext in the genre of poetry may appear to be unique and the first of its kind, non-linear thinking is much more indicative of the way human thought and emotion occurs.  Larsen's poetry allows for us to experience the art of written language in a way that we were made to experience the world and, therefore, turning poetry into something more personal and interactive then thought possible.  What was originally envisioned to be a story about encountering fireflies can now be transformed into any new meaning that can be reached from each 180 possibilities of prose.