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), a historical, ethnographic narrative written by Charles E. Brown for the performance of a young Native American Indian woman at the unveiling ceremonies of bronze markers on the Indigenous Ho-Chunk effigy mounds on Observatory Hill at the University of Wisconsin—Madison located in the Wisconsin Historical Society Archives (1914), and a letter from Brown to State Architect Mr. Roger C. Kirchoff about the threatened destruction of two linear mounds on the public, land-grant university campus located in the same archives (1938). The linear mounds were destroyed to build an additional men's dormitory on campus.
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:
Followers of the man that slew Hnaef, their Ring-Giver.
The tribe to separate, and each family to seek new homes.
Of man on the University campus. They are visited each year.
Gashes burst and blood sprang from the death-wounds under.
There were no foes to oppose their possession of this region.
MOUNDS. Their presence will add to the interest of these.
Of old hate and slaughter to the Danemen vaunt.
There were no foes to oppose their possession of this region.
These proposed dormitories. It appears to us that the.
His bone and brawn be burned there and laid upon the pile,
Held a great council which lasted for days. The Manedo directed.
MOUNDS (effigy, linear and conical) on the campus.
And if then any Frisian should by foemen's taunt.
Hunt the bear, deer and other wild animals of the forest.
Obliterated only five MOUNDS will be left, two small groups.
