INTRODUCTION

Children’s Time was published in 2001 by the American author Deena Larsen. It can already be considered as one of her later works, as she started to write hypertext in 1988, after she had unsuccessfully “tried to glue poems about women in a Colorado mining town with model trains and embroidery thread.” [1]

On the bookshelf of her webpage she puts it into the category “Looking for something quick --10 minutes or less to read the whole thing.” [2] And it is true, that the poem is pretty short and that it does not take long to look at all the text and to get an impression of the atmosphere. Still I think you can spend a lot of time with the text if you really want to get into it. How long it takes depends on what kind of reader you are. As Deena Larsen says in her interview:

I write for three audiences:

People who are approaching hypertext for the first time . I try to give
them something to enjoy, to get their feet wet and something they can
understand.

People familiar with hypertext/elit. I want to give them some meat,
something to discuss and explore with narrative and structural
connections.

Scholars and analysts: If you look deep in my works, you will often find
a hidden space or meaning. Scholars love these types of things. Keeps
them busy. [3]

Considering that this is supposed to be a scolarly work I tried get from the first type of audience to the third, but as my time is still limited y will just explain my main points and leave the rest of the hidden spaces and meanings to the rest of analysts.

In regard of the format I already mentioned that Children’s time belongs to the genre of Kanji-kus. As it is an Asian type of literature Larson probably got the idea to write like that during the years she spent in Japan (from 1987-1990).

The main structure of the poem consists of nine words, which are organized into seven nods (pools of, children, running, past, the wind, sliding, laughing) and which together form the shape of the Japanese symbol for child. Each nod is again subdivided into four lines. The first three lines stand close together while the fourth is always separated a little bit (which also suggests a separation in the content).

You can read the poem either by tracing the structure of the symbol with your mouse or by clicking on underlined words. I choose to read the poem from top to bottom and then from left to right, because it seems to be the most natural for a Western European. Doing that I got the following poem:

pools of

Crowds of kids in

the city swimming pool

at the height of summer

an endless time

children

shoving and jostling hoards

of new bodies straining

to reach the water first

legs, lives intertwined

running

thin boned, impossible birds

running and slipping

at the speeds of light

daring you to catch them

past

calls of Marco Polo bounce

slip under the surface

come up unexpected

going around the world in nothing flat

the wind

falling from the high dive

moments that take forever

and encompass every possibility

thinking of nothing but light

sliding

slipping into and under reality

shadows shooting down bright

colored tubes of air and water

skimming the edges too fast

laughing

shouts and tumbles

smiles forming

breaking reforming echoing

endlessly over the slippery tile

Looking at the poem that way the setting is given at the beginning. A public swimming pool in summer is described. As the first stanza doesn’t contain any verbs, it seems to stand still. It gives the impression of a snap shot taken there. Then the action sets in with the second stanza. The children are getting into the water. They are running and jumping around. The atmosphere at the swimming pool is described as very lively. And the impression of busy movement is increasing until the wind sets in the fifth stanza. There seems to be a brake. The second line “moments that take forever” suggest that the world stands still for a while when you are standing on a diving platform. In contrast to that the movement gets very fast again with the image of the slide and ends with a lot of activities going on at the same time. The whole poem red that way, seems like an alternation of speed and brake. And as it doesn’t have an end or a beginning it reflects the endlessness mentioned in the last line.

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[1]Eastgate Systems (2003) : http://www.eastgate.com/people/Larsen.html (last viewed on the 09/12/08)

[2]Deena Larson: http://www.deenalarsen.net/webshelf.htm (last viewed on the 10/12/08)

[3]Deena Larson: http://mural.uv.es/fersam/emaildeena.html (last viewed on the 10/12/08)