Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky
“Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky” is an interactive piece of electronic literature in which readers explore interconnected stories by clicking on different stars on the website page. Each star represents a life story of someone that is connected to the narrator in some way. Their story focuses on the character’s life challenges, some focusing on their love life. There is peaceful music playing in the background of the reader’s experience, providing a calming ambience for the reader.
This collection of poems is effective in demonstrating the dynamics of relationships by forcing readers to interact and click on the stars to read through the poems. The author, Sharif Ezzat, recalls encounters with his mother, uncle, lover, a young boy, cousin, and his sister. Each poem is one component/interaction of the author’s life, allowing the reader an insight of to who the author is and his values in his relationships and encounters.
In the selections from Text to Hypertext by Silvio Gaggi, Gaggi supports that by allowing the reader to choose the stories they read and what order they read them in, “weaken the privilege of the original text as well as the sense of being a single dominant axis that directs the reader from beginning through middle to end.” In "Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky," Ezzat gets his information across to the reader in a creative and effective way, ensuring they grasp something from the material.
"Like Stars in a Clear Night Sky"