In the visually oriented works of digital poetry, technology intended for the creation of graphical artwork is used to process language instead of images or language as images. For many years writers and artists have used computers, software, and fonts to do more than make shapes on the page. Graphical poems as such are not new to literature, though the tools for producing them alter, accelerate, amplify, and, ultimately, animate the process. Contributing to a trend that fosters changes in the act of reading, an increase of poetry containing graphical elements has intensified in recent years because both the software and publishing medium of the WWW enables (if not encourages) the incorporation of visual elements.