A Reading Exercise marks my first experiment with Flash
animation. Animating the text of an e.e.
cummings poem, this 20-second loop is an exercise in reading
electronic text. Ordinarily, one reads across and down. Here text
dynamically sweeps by horizontally, cutting against the eye/mind's
natural predilection to scan downward.
The animation forces the eye/mind to focus on e.e. cummings' underlying
feelings/thoughts, rather than on a superficial literary structure. And
no poet raged more against superficial literary structures than e.e.
cummings. Like my more textured animated GIFs, A Reading Exercise
needs to run through once before it plays at its intended rate.
Hopefully, you'll be finishing up reading these words during that
relatively brief initial run-through.