About this Web Site

Hypertext Meditationsis the culmination of a dream long held—one that started on the cusp of my teens, informed by my video-game playing ‘tweens. This was way back in the early 90’s, when the internet really wasn’t yet a part of my world; I envisioned a kind of videogame that was more of an art form than a quest, less goal-driven, but still based on a digital medium, and still interactive.

Literary Puzzles and Other Conundrums

My taste for literary puzzles and nonlinear narratives evolved through my years at Prescott College, where my mentor (Allison Stack, now at the University of Edinburgh) introduced me to the work of Jorge Luis Borges

and Julio Cortàzar,

two hugely influential Argentine authors, both of whom were inspired by Surrealism. Borges’ imaginary academia, artistic use of footnotes and stories which do not seem to end so much as double back on themselves expanded my sense of what was possible in fiction, while Cortàzar’s novel Hopscotch—which can be read in a linear fashion, or according to an alternate number pattern found at the bottom of each section—seemed a literary version of the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books I’d loved as a kid, albeit with an important twist: there were no dead ends in this book. Hopscotch is a labyrinth, not a maze; all paths lead to the center. Like so many of Borges’ short-stories, the novel seems to form what Douglas Hofstadter would call a ‘strange loop.’

Not long after I completed my undergraduate degree in the early aughts, Poets & Writers Magazine came out with an issue focused on this newfangled thing called hypertext—and through it, I discovered that fascinating hall of fictive mirrors known as Michael Joyce’s Day Quilt.This hypertext novel seemed to bring all the pieces together for me as a writer. I began to toy with narratives exploiting every potential I could think of as afforded by the internet, beyond the range of the printed page.

Hypertext Meditations

In the four pieces I call Modular Poems, featured on the homepage of this site: ‘Mother Tongue,’ ‘Equinox,’ ‘The Mending,’ and ‘Prints,’ I’m working with the question, Is there any such thing as a perfect sequence for the thoughts that comprise a short-short/prose poem? Also, this one: Can different combinations of the same thoughts yield different effects, artistically, while still remaining coherent? By starting these pieces with a series of visual images linked to text in a kind of puzzle, readers are compelled to negotiate their own path through the piece, and perhaps to decide for themselves.

In Tales of Unknown Superheroes, I took found images (culled, largely, from back issues of Juxtapoz Magazine) and wrote little narrative vignettes that seemed suggested by them. (In my own personal dreamworld, there would be two versions of this piece—one written by me, and one blank, to be written by you. Maybe someday, if my web designer is up for it ;) This piece is part of series of book-arts/collage/literary projects I call Imaginary Books. Which means thatTales of Unknown Superheroes actually exists in the analog world as a 3.5 inch handmade book.

In ‘Undreaming Babylon’ (titled, if you’re curious, after Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon) I’m working with an element of postmodern lit, perhaps, (as in the Modular Poems) by exposing some of the alternate pathways that a literary work can take. By using that little tooltip feature—familiar to us now through those irritating embedded blog ads that float directly over the content you’re trying to read—I’ve both included and excluded some elements of this prose poem/rantifesto that didn’t make the paper version, as well as some other marginalia that appears in my head whenever I happen to read this piece, similar to the way it appears here via these strange, floating boxes.

‘Hypertextual Family Portrait’ is perhaps the piece most closely inspired by Michael Joyce’s hypertext novel mentioned earlier. By using hyperlinked pages to reveal the inner worlds of the characters whose dialog comprises the main page or ‘spine’ of the piece, I seek to reveal a kind of collage-like ‘super-subjectivity’ that brings us closer to both this family and the human heart in a larger sense.

In all of these, I’ve done my level best to avoid the kind of pseudo-literary dancing widgets that seems to characterize so much of the e-poetry and hypertext I’ve found on the Web, and to ask myself always the fundamental question: If he were alive and writing today, in the digital age, what would Borges do?

Onward,

Susan DeFreitas

June, 2010

P.S. I call this site Hypertext Meditations because I’m always thinking about this medium and where it could take us. If you’re a writer, I hope you’re thinking about it, too.

P.P.S. You’ll also find traditional poetry and fiction on this website, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Bio: Susan DeFreitas

Susan DeFreitas is a writer whose work encompasses multiple genres and mediums. Her nonfiction has been published in Yes! Magazine, Natural Home, E, the Environmental Magazine and The Utne Reader; her poetry has appeared in The Bear Deluxe, Third Wednesday and Southwestern American Literature. A recent transplant to Portland, Oregon, she blogs on green technology for EarthTechling, serves as a freelance editor and workshop facilitator with Indigo Editing, and is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing program at Pacific University.