I was really excited about this task, and recently decided to tackle it in a manner entirely sans words. This is kind of scary for me, because I love words and in writing I often hide behind metaphor and imagery. Visual art strikes me as much more raw and revealing, a different kind of exciting, a different kind of beauty.

I decided one afternoon to paint myself and being relatively pleased with the results, decided I would make myself the subject of my graphic sonnet. Fourteen photos, one for each line, and rhyme expressed through slight variations in very similar images. Each line had to stand on its own, but each verse had to be more than the sum of its parts- a narrative needed to form, some sort of relation or reaction between images. The last verse is the two line verse, and is often kind of a shocker, something that changes the entire tone of the poem. Easy, right? I just take a bunch of photographs of myself- in pairs to ensure the rhymes, and put them together in a way that makes sense.

Well, I quickly discovered that 14 images of oneself are too many. They made me feel like I must be vain or self-centered, like some sort of an attention whore or something, so I almost abandoned the effort. But a few friends assured me that I wasn't being some kind of a myspace camwhore. If it comes across that way, I apologize a lot. I still don't really feel like staring at it or anything, and I won't be hurt if you don't either. I apologize- it's a huge image.



I submitted this to Speakeasy magazine- a lit mag run by the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. I kind of doubt they'll give it a second glance, as it's an image and not actually words, but I included an explanation of what the attempt was supposed to achieve.