Editor's Note

The digital word’s ability to morph, move, disappear, reappear, dance, flash, bend, warp, and do just about anything a creative mind wants it to do seems to be of particular interest to poets. One of our earliest contributions, Curtis Harrell’s “Turning Away,” is a haiku that changes before the reader’s eye as lines disappear to be replaced with new lines, creating a new image and thus constantly altering the reading of the poem. Our latest posting of The New River feature’s Shaolian Su, who is not only our newest contributor but also our first international contributor. In his digital poem, “Heart Changes,” Su creates lines that oscillate and shift, moving back and forth rhythmically in a manner that visually evokes the sensation of a heartbeat. Su’s poem is translated by Shuen-shing Lee, who offers us, in a brief introduction to the poem, his own insightful observations and analysis.

In “Cybermidrash,” Alan Sondheim and Joel Weishaus, two well-known figures in the world of hypertext, offer up a collage of speculation, observation, analysis, and commentary, using a sentence from the philosopher and Talmudic commentator Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) as a starting point. The Talmud is commonly cited as a conceptual precursor to digital writing. One moves through all the various interpretations (Mishnah) and commentaries (Gemara), the argument goes, very much as one moves through the various links of a hypertext. In “Cybermidrash,” Sondheim and Weishaus create a similar reading experience. For those of you who might wonder how to read their work, Sondheim provides a generous hint in one of his entries:

read as chanting or singing together, in
read as: primordial sound, plasma, a1-supernova, universal chaos
tending towards coherency.

Creative collaborations are commonplace now in the making of hypertexts. In the work of Su and Lee, and Sondheim and Weishaus, we have two striking examples of how fruitful collaboration can be in the growing realm of digital writing.

Ed Falco
November, 2003