As the title suggests, this was quite a journey. Honestly, I had not idea what to do. I sat and stared at the graphics of “in absentia” until I had determined that this seemed to be completely out of my schema…I had no idea what to do. This lead me to her home page and instructions! After reading those the experience became very exciting for me. I grew up right when computers were being introduced into schools and we had super awesome educational games to play! I had a very nostalgic experience clicking through all the images, finding pictures, poems, and moving graphics. It was exciting to discover the pieces in my own way. Carpenter’s work has really solidified what the term “differential text” means in practice. I think we probably all read and expored her pieces in different orders, but still got what she was intending.

As for the content of the poems, I found the overarching themes of loss or of things being stolen. In “in absentia” it is quite obvious that the community is losing itself, piece by piece their physical space is being taken away and that is causing their emotional attachment to the community to disentagrate as well.

“The Cape” expresses a loss of memory or the past? (still working on this idea) . The poem is a cluster of memories about a place, and the images that accompany it create a sterile tone. My expectation was to find a nostalgic retelling of childhood, what I got was an encyclopedia-feeling experience.

Finally, “…and by islands I mean paragraphs.” I found this one the most difficult to follow. I am still not sure if I saw everything there was to see, in fact I am sure I did not. The parts of this piece that struck me were the parts that described: goods, population, plant life, etc. This struck me because, again, it is such a textbook description paired with accounts of personal encounters on the islands. I feel the loss of scenery and place in this piece. I have descriptions of life and events paired with a black and white drawn map, the place I want to see is not there.

further musings I don’t have time to write about:

–the use of maps
–better understanding of the french verses
–gaining a better grasp of “…and by islands”
–such a contrast between formats for the different pieces