A prose poem published in The Iowa Review Web (Volume 9, Number 2: "Instruments and Playable Texts" (2008)), The Purpling is comprised of approximately ten basic web pages of eight to ten lines each. By clicking on hyperlinks connected to segments of varying lengths, the reader enters what guest editor Stuart Moulthrop calls a "maze of recirculating expression.” While the words on the screen remain static, the reader's experience of "meaning" varies depending on the order of visited links. These visited links, in most browsers, also appear in purple, which becomes a visual representation of not only the work's title, but also the mingling of the reader with the text. Consequently, in both form and content, the work calls attention to nature of reading and questions the authority of a text.