Winter City Sleeps

Fallen Perfection The intricately symbolic format utilized in electronic poetry displays visual and auditory sensual information, along with the words of the poem, increases the depth of the poem’s meaning. Adriana de Barros in “Winter City Sleeps” layers images, precisely changes the duration and speed of images and words, and creates a whirling effect with snowflakes in order to display her idea (Barros). In her poem, Barros effectively uses the varying images of her electronic poem to teach her audience that perfection is a misperception (Barros). (82) Barros introduces her concept by displaying fragments of our imagination forming a centralized idea, represented by pixelated blocks, confusedly trying to find their fit. Then, a bold snowflake appears in the center (Barros). This snowflake illustrates the development of an ideal image for a person. The initial line of the poem states, “inside my head, snowflakes fall as silhouettes of angels grow knee deep” (Barros). Thoughts of model representations of how life should be played out, the

The shifting clause is, “it was all illusion” (Barros). These words are in two sets, with one if front of the other, portraying how people have skewed vision because of their “perfect” ideals (Barros). When the poem says, “bitter leaves died months ago when the days were longer than the nights,” there is an illustration of a bare tree with a human walking toward it (Barros). The bare tree symbolizes that the leaves, or the truths, have fallen, yet the person continues to walk toward the deceit of perfection. The body flashes and grows three times, showing that ideas are most often brought upon by society, a bigger body than each individual (Barros). Barros is portraying that the leaves, again symbolizing truth, are bitter because is can be unpleasant to accept that someone’s ideals are not their reality.