PowerPoint Software/Writer Response "Summer Winter"

In my e-poem, “Summer Winter” (shown below) I experimented with Power-Point and software in attempts to create a work that was both easy to follow and somewhat layered in meaning. While forming my poem, I sought to utilize the animation features of Power-Point in order to add an element of symbiociation so often found within other works of electronic literature. Though not a masterpiece when compared to other works I have been introduced to over the course of the semester, “Summer Winter” does convey my feelings towards the two respective seasons in a succinct yet dynamic manner.

Basically, the intention I had when writing “Summer Winter” was to convey to the reader (or in this case, the viewer) my attitude towards the summer and winter seasons. I am inclined toward the warmer of the two, as is clearly seen by the lines of my poem, where all aspects of summer are cast in a positive view and my own personal longing for summer days is felt. Conversely, my opinions on winter as a bleak and un-enjoyable time are duly noted in the way that the winter half of the poem is construed as one of negativity. Both stanzas have a somewhat mirroring effect which serves to juxtapose the ideas contained within the lines. Take for example the second line from the summer stanza: “The feel of a Frisbee within my grasp” and the winter counterpart: “A snowball smacks me upside the head.” In the summer lines, a sense of pleasure is found in the catching of the Frisbee. In the winter lines however, the reader can most likely empathize with the unpleasant feeling of having a snowball chucked at one’s head. This is exactly the contrast I wished to show throughout the entirety of the e-poem.

Another way I attempted to employ the animation effect of the Power-Point software so as to convey the central idea of the poem was the way I chose to animate the texts of both stanzas. In the summer lines, I wished to encapsulate the fleeting presence of summer which so often comes and goes without give one enough time to enjoy its company. So, just like the symbolic sound of the ice cream man’s van in summertime, which fades in and out of existence quicker than one can ask mom for some loose change, I chose to have the lines of the summer stanza fade in and out in an easy, relaxed manner (see above). For this reason, on all the summer lines, I modified them to exhibit a “compress” entrance and a “stretchy” exit. In a like manner and in keeping with the contrasting nature of the poem, I wanted the lines of the winter stanza to embody the lingering nature the winter seasons seem to have. Just as the cold, dreary days of winter seem to drag on and on and on one after the other, without an end in sight, the words of the winter stanza take an unnecessary amount of time to drop from the sky and then drop off the face of the poem. To accomplish this effect I selected the “swish” effect for all the winter lines, causing them to take a much longer time to appear in their entirety. My hope for this was to awaken a sense of frustration in the viewer; a frustration akin to the one I feel when dealing with the cruelty of winter. In this way, I was able to manipulate the animation properties of the Power-Point software so as to create an atmosphere of love and hate within my e-poem towards the seasons of summer and winter.

Throughout my interaction with the Power-Point software (which I have only used previously for presentations) I found the animation options easy to find and use. They added a depth to my poem that would not have been present were it written on paper. Being able to use pictures was also a meaningful aspect to my e-poem as it allowed a visual presentation of the contrast I sought to display throughout the work. The picture I chose to incorporate into the summer part of the poem included two of my friends playing Ultimate Frisbee, one of the most memorable and enjoyable activities I participate in during summer. For the winter half of the poem, I selected a picture of my friend sitting alone in the snow. This was to further demonstrate the lonely and melancholy feeling winter so often drags along with it. I quite liked being able to employ pictures so as to drive home the main ideals of the poem. Furthermore, I found Power-Point a very easy program to use when it came to animating the text and inserting pictures.

Using Power-Point to construct my poem was not all joy and laughter though. I found it quite tedious to have to keep clicking the preview button so as to survey what I had done so far and what needed correction. This was especially irritating when it came time to deal with objects at the end of the poem because I would have to watch the preceding fifty-or-so seconds before getting to the part I wished to inspect. A fast forward or rewind tool would have been most helpful for the editing process of the e-poem. Also, I can’t help thinking that it would have been easier to develop the poem over a series of slides but as I could not figure out how to get the slides to play in succession I opted to construct the entire work on a single slide. Although this was a somewhat irksome task, the final product proves that it is not impossible and in fact quite rewarding to create e-poetry. Besides the constant clicking and mind-numbing repetition I sometimes experienced during the construction of my e-poem I ultimately enjoyed thinking about, modifying, and finishing “Summer Winter.”