Individual Work
Firefly

Deena Larsen's "Firefly" is a poem about loss. The Flash poem presents five stanzas, each of which appear on successive screens in a pale green font, superimposed over an image of a brick memorial. The reader is able to click on any line of the stanza to reveal additional verses. Each brief verse can be read with the existing stanza. Alternatively, by clicking every line, the reader can uncover whole new stanzas. With the ability to rediscover the poem in numerous ways, it is up to the reader to decide if he/she is uncovering additional meanings in the hidden lines or if the extra verses simply extend the story of the firefly.

Read in a linear fashion, by systematically clicking through the verses, "Firefly" can be taken as a conventional poem with a haunting atmospheric presentation. Larsen writes, "As our silence wears on his wings tremble, eager as his dark body flies off toward other lights obscuring the horizon." When read in a non-linear fashion, the meaning of the poem takes on the character of its subject—fleeting and elusive.