The following experimental digital documentary poem is composed of citations of William Ellery Leonard's new verse translation of the Old English poem Beowulf (1923), Leonard's personal experience narrative of taking part in archaeological fieldwork with Charles E. Brown at an Indigenous Ho-Chunk mound group on the shore of Lake Mendota, in an unpublished manuscript of an autobiographical case study located in the University of Wisconsin—Madison Archives (1920), and "Governors Island," a Ho-Chunk narrative of Lake Mendota by a storyteller once known, collected by Brown in Lake Mendota Indian Legends (1927).
When this MOUND web page is loaded and/or reloaded, server-side code selects and loads a random collection of lines from a relational database of citations:
The mighty Mere-Beast foundered through this hand of mine.
Emerged from the woods. I experienced instant relief.
Located there are probably effigies of Thunderbirds.
Way-weary, yet I 'scaped the clutch of monsters fell.
"Charlie." Then I gathered myself a little together.
The earth he put four water spirits under it to keep it from.
The mighty Mere-Beast foundered through this hand of mine.
Hot as we were, and doubly bad for one as fundamentally.
Indian canoes and people are drowned. At night they crawl.
And the sea up-cast me, flood-tide and swell.
Overwhelmed me. My one need then was merely C. I began.
The local r**men. When they are angry they cause the waters.
Friend Unferth, about Breca,— his feat hast told at length.
Miles across and miles and miles of blue waters toward the.
To become very rough and at such times they overturn the.
