Basho's Frogger and Jabber

"Basho's Frogger, like the haiku upon which it is based, is a modestly-sized piece, consisting of a title and three words, and in the best tradition of Toronto-style concrete poetry, it is predicated on the elaboration of a simple visual pun. However, its simplicity is highly suggestive, as each play-through produces an infinitesimal change in the outcome of the text, which never itself changes. One wonders what this poem has to say about paranoiac reading styles by the bleary-eyed addict in the salad days of the arcades (video game, not Paris). JABBER enters from the opposite direction—rather than three words, there are numberless combinations based on a few etymological roots—but, once again, Hennessy invokes the paranoiac style, as this 'engine,' depending on the mental state of the reader, appears to be the tidal pool into which future lexicographers will wish they could have peered." -- from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2

1 COPY IN THE NEXT

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 2

Published in 2011 by Electronic Literature Organization.

The ELO gave this copy of the work to the Electronic Literature Lab in 2018.

PUBLICATION TYPE

Anthology

COPY MEDIA FORMAT

Web

ORIGINAL URL

https://collection.eliterature.org/2/works/hennessy_frogger_jabber.html