Assignment 7 - Hyperfiction

When entering the page I thought something was wrong. I was just a page with a poem. No references. No author. No title. Just the poem. My conclusion must definitely be, especially in combination with the strengths and weaknesses I describe further down, that I am not yet open to this sort of literature. I am too traditionally.
When thinking about the concept, I tried to focus on the strengths and the weaknesses.

The strengths:
The text is allowed to get a ”life” outside the authors control, which may lead to unimagined places. I am reminded of two periods in Danish literature: 1920/30’s (the authors, and other artistic people, involved with Heretica) and the 1980’s (The ”Strunge” group). In both situations the groups met and debated their contribution to the literature stage. By doing so, they all had a say in everybody’s work. The difference between then and now being the individual person always had the last word, when it came to his/her text. I this new way the author sort of discard his/her text, and leave it to someone else to fix. This of course make it possible to use the combined strength of the ”world” to get the perfect poem.

The Weaknesses
A sentence keep playing in my head: ”Too many cooks spoil the broth”. If there are too many authors on a text, would it not degenerate? I am aware that avant-garde is ”in”, but sometimes one can push so much that the meaning is lost. No one really have any control over the text. And I know that is the point, but I still can help having the feeling that it is going to go wrong (either someone want to make fun with it, and enter some words totally out of context. Or someone takes it too serious, and changes it accordingly. Next thing you know you have a ”poemwar”.). Additionally, I felt it was wrong to even think about changing something. It would be some kind of intrusion. It felt like the poem really belonged to someone else, and I was just the plagiarist standing on the back of the real author trying to produce some sort of ”hit”.