75 + 50 points
The Graphic Sonnet (Sonet Desinée) by Burn Unit, EchHeck
February 11th, 2008 4:36 AM / Location: 45.012222,-93.30930
I bring you greetings from the future! We are encouraged by the growing revival of the sonnet form. I want to call your attention to a (radical?) new expression of the sonnet, going on at SFZero.org
That's how I opened my pitch to 14 by 14 when I sent them this sonnet. I believe it, too. The sonet desinee is a very invigorating new approach to the form, in my opinion.
To produce this particular sonnet I teamed up with Eleanor, who provided the pictures. I wanted to collaborate on this task with someone and I wanted to see what happened if I just let somebody go with minimal direction who has an unfettered interest in the world and the process of making pictures. I handed her my phone several times over the course of about a month and told her to take pictures of things. I also told her to "take pictures that rhyme", just to see what she did. She hasn't quite grasped the concept of verbal rhymes yet, so I don't know exactly how her brain worked on some of these "visual rhymes." She took about twenty different pictures. I contributed one, the 2nd picture in the first stanza. I took the resulting photos and worked with them, trying out different variations. I looked at them in order and then all together on a single large photoshop document. As I did so, some text and ideas began to emerge alongside the images. So I began to work on a textual sonnet as well, which I'll include in this proof, though only as a txt file at the end. I think the two can and should be treated together AND apart, with multiple interpretations possible for the images. In fact, the text may needlessly straightjacket the imagery, so should be treated as itself an interpretation in sonnet form of the whole sonet desinee.
I've been writing sonnets since I was about sixteen, and I have a small but growing collection of what I'd say are pretty good ones. I started out doing strictly Shakespearean rhyme schemes, but as I've grown confident, I get more and more out of doing alternative patterns.
For example, this one I worked and worked at it in the abab cdcd efef gg form and it just wasn't going. I kept smacking into that wall (literally, the pictures of the walls!) and it was when I decided to abandon the comforts of the Shakespearean construct that I got liberated. I settled on a rhyme scheme that I'm sure isn't unheard of, but I sure don't have any examples at hand! aabbab ccddcd ee
I suppose it's just a matter of inverting the priority of couplets, moving them into the main body of each of two sestets, with a "decoupled" pair of lines which I think have the impact almost of blank verse. I think that these also produced two turns in the sonnet, rather than the one that usually happens after the octave. The halting couplets definitely served the text interpretation, I believe, rendering a flat, unsettling feel to the turns, significantly modernizing the feel with a sense of dissonance or dislocation.
I'm working on some other variants, with my own photographs, and I find it a lovely engine for stimulating the production of sonnet text.
I held up final submission of the proof until I got a statement of acceptance or rejection because they are looking for first rights. That statement came the afternoon of February 10 :
I do wonder if it would have had more impact with truly artful photos by a grown up (i.e. InkTea's) instead of the combination of kid's-photos-and-parental-editing.
That's how I opened my pitch to 14 by 14 when I sent them this sonnet. I believe it, too. The sonet desinee is a very invigorating new approach to the form, in my opinion.
To produce this particular sonnet I teamed up with Eleanor, who provided the pictures. I wanted to collaborate on this task with someone and I wanted to see what happened if I just let somebody go with minimal direction who has an unfettered interest in the world and the process of making pictures. I handed her my phone several times over the course of about a month and told her to take pictures of things. I also told her to "take pictures that rhyme", just to see what she did. She hasn't quite grasped the concept of verbal rhymes yet, so I don't know exactly how her brain worked on some of these "visual rhymes." She took about twenty different pictures. I contributed one, the 2nd picture in the first stanza. I took the resulting photos and worked with them, trying out different variations. I looked at them in order and then all together on a single large photoshop document. As I did so, some text and ideas began to emerge alongside the images. So I began to work on a textual sonnet as well, which I'll include in this proof, though only as a txt file at the end. I think the two can and should be treated together AND apart, with multiple interpretations possible for the images. In fact, the text may needlessly straightjacket the imagery, so should be treated as itself an interpretation in sonnet form of the whole sonet desinee.
I've been writing sonnets since I was about sixteen, and I have a small but growing collection of what I'd say are pretty good ones. I started out doing strictly Shakespearean rhyme schemes, but as I've grown confident, I get more and more out of doing alternative patterns.
For example, this one I worked and worked at it in the abab cdcd efef gg form and it just wasn't going. I kept smacking into that wall (literally, the pictures of the walls!) and it was when I decided to abandon the comforts of the Shakespearean construct that I got liberated. I settled on a rhyme scheme that I'm sure isn't unheard of, but I sure don't have any examples at hand! aabbab ccddcd ee
I suppose it's just a matter of inverting the priority of couplets, moving them into the main body of each of two sestets, with a "decoupled" pair of lines which I think have the impact almost of blank verse. I think that these also produced two turns in the sonnet, rather than the one that usually happens after the octave. The halting couplets definitely served the text interpretation, I believe, rendering a flat, unsettling feel to the turns, significantly modernizing the feel with a sense of dissonance or dislocation.
I'm working on some other variants, with my own photographs, and I find it a lovely engine for stimulating the production of sonnet text.
I held up final submission of the proof until I got a statement of acceptance or rejection because they are looking for first rights. That statement came the afternoon of February 10 :
Dear Jon Olsen,
Sorry, but this is not for us.
Best,
Peter Bloxsom
Editor, 14 by 14
http://www.14by14.com
I do wonder if it would have had more impact with truly artful photos by a grown up (i.e. InkTea's) instead of the combination of kid's-photos-and-parental-editing.
10 vote(s)
5
GYØ Ben
5Stu
5Jellybean of Thark
5teucer
5JTony Loves Brains
5Sean Mahan
5Fonne Tayne
5Bex.
5rongo rongo
5JJason Recognition
Terms
(none yet)7 comment(s)
posted by teucer on February 11th, 2008 8:31 PM
Here, I'll comment so any of my friends who aren't also yours will see it on that side of their updates page. Because this deserves noticing.
posted by JTony Loves Brains on February 11th, 2008 8:45 PM
Wow!
Such a terse note from 14 by 14. Somehow it remains very polite, but I'm not sure how. At least it was a real response, though, so you at least got their attention.
posted by Sean Mahan on February 11th, 2008 9:37 PM
This is great, and "Take Pictures That Rhyme" should be early, 10 point or so task. And to blurt out a thought: someday, I think everyone will really appreciate that almost-fisheye-and-kinda-blurry softness you get with cellphone cameras. Unless they already do - SFZero photogs?
gosh with the massive swamping of six word praxis, I'm tempted to unsubmit and resubmit this. geeez...