“White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectares” by Loss Pequeño Glazier

This long JavaScript poem by Glazier offers a sequence of stanzas that change every 10 seconds, disrupting the reading flow and thought process. This poem can be recombined for a total of 2.36 x 10²¹ (sextillion) distinct textual permutations of the poem, placing it in the tradition of Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes and Jim Andrews’ Stir Fry Texts.

But don’t despair: examine the instructions and suggestions offered by Glazier and the ELC1 on reading the poem. Think about what the variant lines suggest about the speaker’s mindset as he and his family go on a trip to Costa Rica and you’ll notice a shift in that mentality as the poem progresses. You will find that even though you haven’t read every possible variant (which is humanly impossible), “you would eventually get a sense that you had ‘read it’ and you would surely be right” (Andrews, “Material Combinatorium Supremum”).

Featured in The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1.