See the Pen Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson by Jeffrey Zhu (@vurca) on CodePen.
A Twist on Translation
If not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho are poems translated by Anne Carson to English from Greek.
The Design
The text was placed and displayed in a way to give the user a way to remind themselves that these translations are not one for one, and that there were liberties taken when translating these fragmented scripts.
The Code
The effect that is used is the parameter webkit-blur in the CSS. Combined with :hover and the right HTML code, it creates this effect.