INTRODUCTION

This paper will consist basically on the analysis of the poem “The Portrait of the Artist” by Peter Howard. Peter Howard is a poet but not a traditional one, part of his poetry has the format of hypertext which is published on his websites “Low Probability of Racoons” and “Peter Howard”. “The Portrait of the Artist” is an example of hypertext poetry and furthermore, it is a poem in which the author uses Macromedia Flash software. Macromedia Flash is as the author says in the article “Flash Poetry” published in “Trace Online Writing Centre” a “tool for generating and presenting animated poetry, especially for distribution via the World Wide Web”. The purpose in this paper will consist on dissecting this poem in order to analyse the tools that the author uses to create it. Howard’s hypertext poetry is based on visual effects, hence in “The Portrait of the Artist” we’ll see a lot of images, text will be very scant but at the same time very interesting in the way it is used. For that reason, the analysis will focus especially in these visual and sometimes acoustic elements.

In the analysis of tools of the poem, I’ll try to do an objective analysis, I mean, I’ll only mention what people can see and make by reading the poem. However in the conclusion I’ll talk about the possible meanings of some of these elements in order to express my point of view and also in order to illustrate my idea of hypertext as far as the relationship between writer and reader is concerned.

I consider the whole work of Peter Howard very interesting, not only for his poems but also for the articles in which he talks about his poetry and the way in which it is received by the audience and critics. It is for that reason that I thought it will be as useful as interesting to include a list of links to some of the most best websites about Peter Howard, some of them of the author himself, and others about him and his work.