This collections of four hypertext poems are organized around each of the four elements of old. The primary techniques that guides these works is collage and pastiche because each work is built from images (mostly by Dave McKean) and textual excerpts from other writers, with the exception of “Fire,” which Sanders wrote. The pieces are structured linearly, which means that each page has a link to the next until one reaches the end of the sequence. One piece, “Air” doesn’t have links, but uses the meta refresh tag to load the next page in the sequence every 5 seconds, perhaps to create the sense that one is being carried by a gentle wind from one page to the next. The combination of images and pithy lines and silky smooth prose poems create an oddly refreshing experience of the Web, as the minimalist design and sense of assembled Web objects— most of the texts are images of texts, which are computationally very different objects.
With the title’s use of the word “possessions,” the use of images for texts, and a detailed credits page, Sanders foregrounds the creative side of borrowing and assembling to create a work with a remarkably coherent vision and sense of originality.