Under the Shadow of the White-Faced Bromeliads

Ciao a tutti!
Mi chiamo Rocco Sementilli and I am a junior at the University of Florida in the United States. I am majoring in English and minoring in Italian Studies. This blog, entitled “Under the Shadow of the White-Faced Bromeliads”, is an assignment for my professor Gregory Ulmer, a prominent figure in the field of electronic literature.  Professor Ulmer has taught us about “electracy”, a term describing the literacy of the new, evolving electronic medium. Thus, this blog is born out of the knowledge I have obtained under Professor Ulmer and is written in the style of Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Calvino, an Italian writer, sought to provide for the new millennium six memos or qualities that are universally important to the future of literature. These qualities are Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, and Multiplicity (Calvino only completed five during before his death.)  

This blog then is a collection of memos that I have written using Calvino as a guide, Professor Ulmer as  a mentor, and Katherine Hayles (author of Electronic Literature) as a resource. Yet, “Under the Shadow of the White-Faced Bromeliads” is more than that. Named after the electronic poem “White-Faced Bromeliads on 20 Hectacres” by Loss Pequeno Glazier, this blog is a multimedia experience that encompasses various forms of media and language. Like Glazier, I am combining language and mediums to express the ever-morphing field of electronic literature.

Divided into the five memos, each category contains 5 more posts. These posts contain the likeness of Calvino’s original memo quality, an analogy of my own choosing, an example of the quality found in Hayle’s library of Electronic Literature included with the book, an explanation of Hayle’s concepts relating to that example, and an emblem that I have chosen to represent that quality.

Ti ringrazio per leggere,

Rocco Sementilli