mary oliver's

When I Am
Among the Trees

1. Interaction
1.1. Drift 1.2. Clarify 1.3. Select 1.4. Follow
2. Temporal
2.1. Scroll 2.2. Stanza 2.3. Word 2.4. Writing
3. Perspective
3.1. Tilt 3.2. Sun 3.3. Scatter 3.4. Fisheye
4. Composition
4.1. Tree 4.2. Float 4.3. Magazine 4.4. Grid
5. Scale
5.1. Random 5.2. Fade 5.3. Breathe 5.4. Proportion
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This project is a typographic exploration of 'When I Am Among the Trees' by Mary Oliver for Richard The's Data as Material class in the Parsons School of Design. Twenty variations of the same poem are presented across twenty separate webpages, each changing the poem's form through shifts in composition, typography, hierarchy, scale, and pacing while keeping the text entirely intact.

The poem was chosen for its quiet, meditative rhythm and its preoccupation with presence and slowness. Some variations honor that stillness, others deliberately work against it, asking what happens when a gentle poem is made chaotic, rushed, or fragmented.

Built using HTML/CSS and Javascript through Cursor AI by Diana Chalakova.

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."