(This page refers to the initial phase of the Anti-Sonnets project: the production of one sonnet per day for a year through 2018. For the Anti-Sonnets books, scroll through each individual entry on the main page).
Fourteen lines of fourteen semi-colons.
Hand-drawn lines between fourteen points of teenage love interest, as manifested on a (subsequently erased) Google Map.
Fourteen lines of the numbers 1-14, re-ordered randomly via a free online random number generator.
Fourteen scenes from “Battle Vixens”.
The fourteen letters in the Latin name for skylark – alauda arvensis – re-ordered.
Fourteen sentences mentioning the word “fourteen” on Reddit. Re-contextualising a free, unedited and evanescent form. Robert Fitterman’s “collective subjectivity“: “I’m all in favor of subjectivity, I just think it doesn’t have to be my own. I’m really interested in print collective subjectivity as a new way to think about these emotions, this affect. Does it have to be me—singular author—articulating my feelings to a reader?”
Fourteen acronyms for Latin American guerrilla organisations.
The first fourteen lines of Nick Berry’s “Every Loser Wins”. The performance artist Charlotte Moorman was credited with “introducing kitsch into avant-garde art” (Rothfuss/Cellist, pp 4). Jonathan Jones writes on kitsch in the Guardian: “Art is beyond taste. Leave your prejudices behind when you want to be uplifted.” See also CCXXVI, CCXXVII.
Four grids of sixteen black squares, each with a different pair removed.
Fourteen proclamations of love on Reddit. See VI.
Wordsworth sonnet, compressed into a single line.
Sonnet comprising fourteen tweets by the Polish glamour model and pop singer, Ewa Sonnet.
Failed attempt to write a Petrarchan Sonnet in half an hour.
Descriptions and contexts of the first fourteen sonnets in the sequence.
The first fourteen winners of Mr Universe.
Sonnet for Iris Clert.
All the words from the first fourteen sonnets in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, in alphabetical order.
Binary code for fourteen million.
List of fourteen Las Vegas casinos that never opened. Echoes of Robert Fitterman’s ‘Metropolis 16’ – lists of strip malls across the US, of which Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: “Fitterman’s list of deadening stores gives us, the reader – first hand – the feeling of being in a mall. Fitterman has actually given us a more realistic experience” (Goldsmith/Uncreative). The fact these casinos never opened adds an extra dimension: they lurk in the no-man’s-land between reality and fantasy. Still evocative (perhaps more so), we feel we know them, when we never did. Casinos: see CCLXVII. Lists: see also: LXVII, LXXI, CCVII.
The word ZAP!, repeated fourteen times.
Fourteen prospective Rocky film sequels. Fantasy – fill in your own narrative. Also: parody of cultural unoriginality: the churning-out of sequels as the easy option. (See also: CCLXX).
Fourteen number fourteens.
List of the first fourteen Campbell’s Soup flavours.
Fourteen synonyms for the word ‘stupid’.
Fourteen postcards from El Salvador. Juxtaposition based on our in-built assumptions of language/words: postcards evoke sunshine holidays, not the murder capital of the world. Yet in a fantasy world (and one in which postcards have been replaced by emails, Google Earth etc), such journeys are possible. See also: Paraguay, CCXIII wilderness, CLXXXIX.
Junk mail advertising e-mail addresses from fourteen regions.
Fourteen black and white stripes.
Sonnet collated from Knowhere.co.uk. See VI.
Fourteen single parentheses. ‘Sonnet for a Go-Go Dancer’.
The random article button on Boobpedia pressed fourteen times. What is the ultimate anti-poetry (when measured against conventional assumptions)? Is it precisely that gap between expectation (of poetry) and result (and subsequent emotions stirred in the viewer (including temptation)) that – paradoxically – makes it poetic? See also XXXI, XXXIX.
A waffle with fourteen holes. See above. Again, the paradox of achieving poetry by the Duchampian tactic of seeking to remove all aesthetic meaning, and/or provoke.
Fourteen lines of code from Chuckie Egg. See nostalgia, CLXXXVII.
Fourteen similes in Razzle magazine. For Razzle see also: XLIV, LXIII, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
List of fourteen poetry awards. Improbable autobiographical claims, as a means to inspire others. What is truth and fiction in today’s social media world? Create-your-own-avatar. See LXVI.
Fourteen holes in a piece of paper.
Anna Nicola Smith autopsy report and KFC menu, combined.
Fourteen Brazilian crisp packets.
Fourteen lines of quotes by Kimberley Miners. Glamour model turned supposed ISIS sympathiser. Juxtaposition of sex and revolution (see also CLV): blurring lines between real life and fantasy. Similarities (presumed manipulation, etc) inherent in polar opposites. Transcription of (reported) clumsy language not to demean the subject, but to expose the structures of state (tabloid media, etc) that do the demeaning. Again, the sonnet form maximises the attendant contexts (and provocations). See also revolution, CXLVII, CXCI, CLXXIV.
Fourteen photographs of nuns from pornographic movies. Response to Wordsworth’s ‘Nuns Fret Not..‘ Anti-poetry/provocation: see XXX.
Auto-generated Shakespearean sonnet.
Fourteen lines about Upper Volta.
Road sign indicating sharp deviation of route.
Sonnet after John Clare.
Fourteen pairs of eyes, from Razzle (after Sonnet 130). For Sonnet 130, see also: CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, LXIII, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
Valentine’s Day Sonnet (after Shakespeare, via Reddit).
Sonnet 90 by Sir Philip Sidney, in pink highlighter pen.
Fourteen lines of white squares.
List of fourteen former Negro League baseball teams.
Fourteen photos of the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
Fourteen web links to the greatest sonnets ever written. An impossibly subjective judgement, yet one which (in countless TV run-downs), we tend to take seriously. Here, that futility is made evident by the unclickability of the codified choices. See Seth Abrahamson’s The Top 50 Moments of the 2014 Winter Olympics (Abrahamson, Metamericana, p24). See also XXXIV, LXVI.
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar. Employment of a fictional avatar is designed to further distance the piece from the subjective self, thus effectively doubling its re-contextual possibilities (author-as-avatar, and avatar-as-author). (See also LXVI, CXLVII). The prior intention is/was to produce fourteen such sonnets, implying a published (or publishable) collection: again, that implication adds context. See Genette/Paratexts, chapter 3. Pseudonym-in-plain-sight: “..from the moment the truth of the patronymic is disclosed by a more remote paratext, by a piece of biographical information, or more generally by fame, the reader’s reverie about the pseudonym ceases to be a straightforward speculation based more or less on what the name itself suggests… the pseudonym is included in his image, or idea, or that particular author” (Genette/Paratexts, pp 50). See also: real-fake-real, CLXX; dancehall, CCXV.
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (‘Like a Virgin’ lyrics) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ lyrics) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (‘I Want Candy’ lyrics) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (‘Crazy Nights’ lyrics) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (deconstructed Funland sign) (see LI). Hint at the Rabelaisian/’quasi-folkloric’ (McCarthy/Jellyfish). McCarthy on ‘Dodgem Jockeys’: “They’ve seen it all before: these circuits blurring into one, these endless crashes, disasters playing out as pleasure, roar of the generator merging with screams of girls, bellows of boys who hope to get into their pants later that night, when the ride’s over, generate more generations, send more wreckage the angel’s way…” Also Fluxus: “Fluxus rejects opera and theater.. which represent the institutionalising of serious art.. and is for, instead of opera and theater, vaudeville or the circus”. (Macunias/Fluxus, pp 42). See also CLXXXV, CCXXVIII.
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (deconstructed Fryup sign) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (cafe menu board) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (fourteen telephone numbers from Razzle) (see LI). For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (sonnets by WB Yeats and Claude McKay, compressed) (see LI).
Sonnet written using Kola Kubes avatar (three sonnets by Edna St Vincent Millay, compressed) (see LI).
List of fourteen fictional occupations of April Sprule. See also: Arthur Cravan’s list of improbable autobiographical claims in ‘Maintenant’ (Richter/Dada, pp. 85); Ed Ruscha’s ‘The Information Man’ (Richards/Ruscha, pp. 75): both a meta-modernistic blend of truth and fiction. The mega-subjective space here is the gap between the two; likewise, the invisible implausibilities (of journey; of possibility) that lurk in between each claim. See also XXXIV, CXLVII, CLXXXII.
List of fourteen bouts on a boxing record. Tom McCarthy described the work of Gerhard Richter as “hiding-in-the-act-of-showing” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). The same can be said of statistics when related to emotionally-charged events, especially in sports: stripping back the details paradoxically enhances the piece’s potential: to reveal the untold stories not only of each boxing match but every opponent and their respective pasts and futures; the real-ness of those who have sunk without trace; a memorialisation of the average and ordinary. Almost unlimited potential for further (real or fictional) investigation. Referencing Ed Ruscha’s Dodgers Stadium, 1000 Elysian Park Ave. (effectively the imagistic equivalent, due to being deserted), Tom McCarthy writes: “[Ruscha manages], by presenting one of the most charged event-spaces imaginable (a baseball field) utterly deserted, to implicitly inject it with each triumph and defeat, every 50,000 voiced roar of hope and fury and redemption from both past and future” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). The same intent as Tom Friedman’s erased Playboy centrefolds: see CLXII. Also: non-notability – see CLX, CCLXXIV.
Fourteen pictures of Martin Creed.
Fourteen lines of filler text.
Sonnet comprised from junk mail.
List of cargoes of fourteen ships attacked by Somali pirates 2005-2007. Piracy as aesthetic concept: “The recurrent pirate references from Robert Louis Stevenson [in Asger Jorn’s Fin de Copenhague] are motivated.. because they represent an ethos of criminal and anarchic counter-market lifestyles” (Dworkin/Illegible, pp 27). See also hijacks, CLXXIV: previously romanticised pursuits, now re-contextualised by modern politics. See also shipwrecks, CCXXI. Also: ‘hiding-in-the-act-of-showing’ (see LXVII). Omitting details only enhances the potential for that romanticisation.
Fourteen lines of stars.
Sonnet generated by spinning a globe fourteen times.
Mauritanian Premier League table. See LXVII.
The first fourteen words of script from Debbie Does Dallas.
Words from the fourteenth line of every fourteenth page of Days of Rage.
Fourteen pictures comprising Taco Bell menu items and ice skaters.
Fourteen voltas.
Fourteen boxes of Pukka Pies.
Last meal of Texas Death Row prisoner EX529.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner EX646.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner EX759.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner EX949.
Last meal, last statement and personal data of Texas Death Row prisoner EX689.
Last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 999066.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 000838.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 999303.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 999180.
Crime, last meal, last statement and personal data of Texas Death Row prisoner 999183.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 999252.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner EX529.
Crime, last meal and personal data of Texas Death Row prisoner EX662.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner EX858.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 714.
Crime, last meal and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 000935.
Crime and last meal of Texas Death Row prisoner 000924.
Crime and last statement of Texas Death Row prisoner 999288.
Sonnet using answers from a Google search for ‘Robogeography’.
Fourteen letters in the phrase ‘FIGHT ORGY MANIA’. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, LXIII, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
Sonnet relating details of McComb, MS/Britney Spears.
Sonnet relating details of Evergreen Park, IL/Unabomber.
Sonnet relating details of Asheville, TX/John Holmes.
Sonnet relating details of Mexia, TX/Anna Nicole Smith.
Sonnet relating details of Gravette, AR/Tommy Morrison.
Sonnet relating details of Kosciusko, MS/Oprah Winfrey.
Sonnet using lines featuring Taco Bell from Reddit.
Sonnet using lines featuring Taco Bell from Reddit.
Sonnet using lines featuring Taco Bell from Reddit.
Picture of Romanian gymnasts. The futile pursuit of perfection; suffocating veneration. Sport-as-art as political tool; as vicarious thrill.
Picture of Nadia Comaneci. See CIX.
The word ‘CLUJ’ repeated fourteen times. A city: different things to different people. Stereotype and/or adventure. Foreign-ness.
Found sonnet/Cluj graffiti. Context of Romanian history:“With its restructuring of the urban landscape, graffiti may in fact be the most familiar instance of detournement. At its simplest, graffiti can turn the sign of impassive corporate power – the solid expanse of an uncommunicating wall, for instance – into a support for the declaration of precisely those voices it would exclude.” (Dworkin/Illegible, pp 14)
Found sonnet/Cluj graffiti.
Found sonnet/Cluj graffiti.
Found sonnet/Cluj graffiti.
Fourteen declarations of ‘Happy 50th Birthday’ on Reddit.
Nothing. Nothingness is impossible: here, it is contextualised by its title, and its non-appearance within this sequence. See CXX.
Sonnet existing in the mind only. See CXX.
Deleted sonnet. See CXX.
No sonnet due to hangover. Is the ‘nothingness’ here different to the ‘nothingness’ of the other sonnets in this particular sequence? Is there a limit to the ways in which ‘nothingness’ be ‘read’ differently, even if it is ostensibly identical (ie. a blank page)?
No sonnet due to sonneteer being on strike. Gustav Metzger’s call for an art strike, ostensibly to cripple the system: “The refusal to labour is the chief weapon of workers fighting the system; artists can use the same weapon.” See also CXX.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, torn into fourteen pieces. A cut-up is more representative of reality than something governed by sequence. William Burroughs said: “Life is a cut-up” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). McCarthy proposes that ‘real’ realism involves “digressing, sliding, jolting, looping..” In other words, mega-subjectivising: treating thought-processes as part of a broader reality. See also CXXXVI. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, deleted but for the colours. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Chicken Tikka recipe. Food/expropriation: see also CCIV.
Camouflaged sonnet. If something is camouflaged does it cease to exist? Perhaps it’s this central idea of disappearing, blending in, or, inversely, standing out – whether personally, socially or politically – that makes camouflage so seductive to many artists” (Blechman in Newsome/Turk, pp 53). See also CCCXXXIII.
Edited cast list from ‘The Texas Vibrator Massacre’. Alterations to Wikipedia pages remain archived even when swiftly re-edited, through the ‘View history’ tab. Thus fantasy is rendered into permanence: avatars live for ever. Each Wikipedia page is made mega-subjective by its own partially hidden paratexts. See also CXXXIII; also Deletionpedia, CLVIII.
Fourteen-line news report from the Yorkshire Post. Using the rural and parochial as a metaphor for a return to self (in contrast to urban detournement). Also, re-contextualisation of random language into poetry (see Goldsmith’s French Writer Wins Nobel). A realist piece is unsullied by other subjectivities. It is what it is, and retains its power because it is altered by context alone.
Fourteen-line joke from Razzle magazine. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, LXIII, XCVIX, CLIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
Fourteen-line sports quiz from the Yorkshire Post.
Homophonic translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130. (via appliedpoetics.org). Marking no. 130 by referencing Shakespeare’s original anti-sonnet: a subjective translation, or an objective one? Moreover, Sonnet 130 seems an appropriate (though coincidental) place to begin these process-notes. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
All the colours in Sonnet XXXI (via appliedpoetics.org). Extending the theory behind Dworkin’s Fact: how far can one break down a piece of work? In what way does such a “breakdown” change its context/politics? Would a breakdown of its actual ingredients have been more or less objective? What happens if the objective sonnet is subsumed into the subjective body? The context established by the (again, coincidental) link between Sonnets [C]XXXI.
Properties of the colour SaddleBrown. Extending Dworkin’s theory of breakdown (see previous): how far can one go? Dworkin’s “social politics as paratexts”.
List of fourteen ways to destroy a sonnet. Inspired by Matthieu Saladin’s ‘Actions to Destroy Instruments’. Can something be destroyed once it has been created? Can the act of destruction itself allow it to live on, at least contextually? In his ‘Appeal for Witnesses, for a Painting in the Oral Tradition’, Gil Woman burned a painting in front of an invited audience. Only they had seen it, so it lived on only in their memories. But even after they are all dead, reports of the act will live on. In this case, the quality/materiality of the painting is irrelevant. It is the process that matters. Furthermore, Bob Nicklas writes in The Anti-Museum: “[The] attempted erasure of the past turns out to be entirely futile, as if reducing a row of Assyrian columns to dust obliterates their large, indelible existence – every written account, every image ever recorded in print or on file… all would have to be deleted as well as deleted from memory – a complete impossibility” (pp 364). Deletion – see also CXXVI, CLVIII.
Any previous sonnet, read out loud eight hundred and forty times in succession. After Erik Satie’s ‘Vexations‘, which requires 840 repetitions of the same few lines of musical notation. According to The New Yorker: “Those who sit for all eight hundred and forty repetitions tend to agree on a common sequence of reactive stages: fascination morphs into agitation, which gradually morphs into all-encompassing agony. But listeners who withstand that phase enter a state of deep tranquility.” However, such a concept is surely flawed, as it would take a particular, aesthetically-minded individual to submit to such a process. Such a transitory experience will fail to touch the vast majority, who will give up within minutes. The key is to present similar, contextually crucial works in a way which makes them inviting to the masses.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, Google-searched. Uncreativity pervades this week, perhaps influenced by current reading: The Anti-Museum. Example of how minimal interference can change context: see Seth Abrahamson’s The History of Dairy Queen. If context pervades viewing/reading (see, for example, Mapplethorpe’s flowers), how to illustrate that it has also impacted process? Idea for a series of re-contextualised Sonnet 130s. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Sonnet comprising words from the fourteenth line of the fourteenth page of fourteen books on my book-shelf. Genesis P. Orridge says of the cut-up: “Outside of your control, you get combinations and collisions that you would never get, no matter how smart or aesthetically sophisticated you are”. (The Anti-Museum, pp. 685). See CXXII. But the choice of cut-up remains subjective. Is there not more context to be gleaned by admitting to an element of subjective choice? [1]. See also CXLI.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, pushed through Google translate. Process-as-context: contrary (apparently) to the form’s tradition as “a portrait of the mind in action” (‘Penguin Book of the Sonnet’, pp. xxxvi). Subverting Google-globalism, by using it to produce something for which it was not intended: unclassifiable, unprofitable etc. Referring to Gerhard Richter’s blurred reproductions of mass media, Tom McCarthy writes: “He.. overwrites our perceptual relation to the world by rerouting it through its glitch-ridden mediating screens” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). As here, the sonnet remains essentially unchanged, yet its media irrevocably alters the context. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, replacing nouns etc with alternatives from the ‘Wordsworth Thesaurus of Slang’. See Harryette Mullen’s Variation on a Theme Park. After a series of failures, the decision to resist strict Oulipian rules (ie. n+7) in favour of a more subjective choice. This highlights the process (and its attendant dilemmas) and better exposes the juxtapositions. [2] For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Marked notes on ‘Sonnet for a Go-Go Dancer in Las Vegas’. Why the need for the (failed) final product? The title provides the frame of reference; the deletion “physically removes so that the viewer may mentally impose” (Dworkin, ‘No Medium’, pp 128) The evidently tortuous process – and its original inspiration – tell more than the actual, subjective attempt ever could. Furthermore, the marker’s clinical, careless (“abourt”) response stands in stark contrast to the author’s (and the form’s) painfully wrought emotions. [3]
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 in emojis. Juxtaposition of ancient and modern; Dada-ish provocation (see Daily Mail). Raises issues of hierarchies of language (which acts/objects have emojis, which don’t). Further investigation reveals many similar experiments: can anything still be ‘new’? Couldn’t I simply have copied one of the previous attempts, or would that have been to deny the ‘process’? For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Stack of fourteen books. Straddling the indefinable borders between maximalist and minimalist (one million-ish words, or mere titles?); subjective and objective (authorial choice (and its attendant paratexts), or randomly generated?); truth and fiction. These million-ish words, hidden from view, mean nothing: arguably, their very denial makes the piece contextually richer. Speaking of Walter Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote: “He [Benjamin] sat in libraries for ten or fifteen years and pulled books off a shelf and sort of opened them randomly. When something would catch his eye, he started copying the passages out. He said, “The act of reading is the act of flying over landscape at 10,000 feet, but the act of copying is the act of walking on a road.”” See also CXXXVI.
The phrase ‘I AM SONNETEER!’ repeated fourteen times. See Ron Padgett’s Nothing in that Drawer: “It looks the same, but when you say it out loud, it doesn’t sound the same”. Revelation, conviction, exclamation, provocation, etc. Liberation: we are all sonneteers.
Internet-generated filler text. Art is inescapably political: Dada prescribed laughter/nonsense in response to institutional adversity; Marina Abramovic insisted “Art which is only committed to aesthetic values is incomplete” (Abramovic). One may react to senseless atrocities with silence, or with nihilism – see Arthur Cravan. Clearly, despite millions of out-pourings on social media, there can be no words. Besides, who am I to (a) present a sonnet on a day like this; (b) abstain, thus implying its absence will make a difference? The middle ground is mundanity: an acknowledgement of art’s inherent hopelessness. An empty act; empty words. Beckett’s “nameables and catastrophes and air full of cries convey the horror and unspeakability of this event to which they never refer [the holocaust] far more profoundly than.. directly representational writing” (McCarthy/Jellyfish).
List of fourteen evocative places. Inspired both by Aram Saroyan’s j;u;n;g;l;e, and Richard Huelsenbeck’s 1918 Dada Manifesto (Richter, ‘Dada’, pp 106): “The STATIC poem makes words into individuals. Out of the letters spelling ‘forest’ steps the forest with its treetops, liveried foresters and wild sows; maybe a boarding house steps out too..”. In other words, in a sense, a subjective list of objective possibilities.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 as word-search. Inspired by Mosset’s ‘invisible readymades’ (Richter, Dada, pp 86), in effectively hiding the work in plain sight. Going further: without clues, without context, could a work be entirely hidden, and yet still be art? In this case, invisibility is deliberately compromised in order to provoke a participatory response from the reader/viewer: the process of solving the puzzle, within its particular context, is intended to invoke more possibilities than sonnet-as-puzzle itself. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Fragments of avant-garde manifestos. Dada said that “the masses need[] to be shaken from their stupor” (Richter, Dada, pp 125). Yet there remains something paradoxical about manifestos created by and for those who detest rules. Surely better to broaden the manifesto(s) possibilities through a fragmentary and partly illegible approach. The context of its being proclaimed a manifesto says enough.
Fourteen prospective revolutionary logos. I love the avant-garde notion of aesthetic revolution and its wild proponents, from Tristan Tzara to the likes of Arthur Cravan, who devoted (and ultimately gave up) his life to a form of anti-performance art. I want to create an avatar (see Sonnet LXVI) who can encapsulate this, through an (auto)biographical blur of art and life, fact and fiction, provocation and impossibility. Effectively, one that is mega-subjective: that is, the message is not in the resulting narrative, but in its concept, process and context. See Philip Larkin’s proposal for the ultimate girls’ school story in ‘Trouble at Willow Gables’ (pp 271-273). In this sonnet, the home-made scribbles aim to reflect an almost tangible, adolescent fervour for excitement, yet the illegible aspects, the ‘boxed-in’ design, hint at the paradox of manifestos by groups which purport to be bound by no rules. See also revolution, XXXVIII, CLV, CXCI, CLXXIV, CCCVII.
Four palimpsests of Fryup history. Embracing the rural as metaphorical antidote; an unashamed escape from the avant-garde obsession with the city. Unashamed escapism to a place where one can create one’s own subjective, semi-fictional reality: see Jules Romain’s Donogoo-Tonka, in which a scientist seeks to salvage his reputation by literally building a city whose existence he had previously lied about. Voices, past and present, clamour to be heard: societal and historical hierarchies collapsed.
Circular palimpsest of Fryup history. See CXLVIII.
Fading palimpsest of Fryup history. See Gerhard Richter, CCXXXV. Also CXLVIII.
Faded palimpsest of Fryup history. See CL, CXLVIII.
Faded photograph of Fryup history. See CLII, CXLVIII.
Juxtaposition of Razzle magazine and Fryup history. Use of easily identifiable, nostalgic (and in this case, provocative) emblems of trash culture in order to enhance its associative potential (see also Boris Lurie, Les Lions). Kurt Schwitters wrote: “The association of ideas cannot be unequivocal because it is dependent solely on the associative capacity of the beholder. Everyone has different experiences and remembers and associates them differently.” (Richter, Dada, pp 148).” Therefore, in contrast to Schwitter’s wider point (see [4]), it surely follows to heighten the potential of association: ie. by employing items of the every-day. See also nostalgia, CLXXXVII. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, LXIII, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIX, CLXXXI.
Juxtaposition of retro Crispy Pancakes box and Fryup history. See previous; also CLXXXVII.
Quebecois cut-up. If we accept that apoliticism in art is impossible, why not embrace (and to an extent, detourn) its inevitability? The fervour for aesthetic revolution (see also revolution, XXXVIII, CXLVII, CXCI, CLXXIV) is encapsulated by 1960s Quebec, which, suddenly freed from the shackles of Catholicism, enthusiastically embraced parallel pursuits of pornography and liberation. The juxtaposition is provocative and hedonistic. The use of (digital) cut-up renders the message vague and inconclusive (Richter’s ‘hiding-in-the-act-of-showing’ (McCarthy/Jellyfish)) – this is not intended as a sonnet about Quebecois nationalism, but as an invitation to express one’s own (hitherto dormant) expressions of liberation elsewhere. Themed palimpsest: see also CLXXVIII.
Fourteen-stage instructions for making a paper plane. The way in which “an artwork create[s] the conditions for legal and manmade borders to be contravened” (Watson, Militancy). Silva Gruner’s ‘The Middle of the Road‘ consisted of statuettes of Tlazolteotl, the Aztec goddess of fertility, which were placed on specially constructed medal stools along a section of the US-Mexico border wall which was well known for immigrant crossings. Years later, “none of the statues remained, but the stools were still there and were being used as a means to help people scale and cross over the wall, according to locals.” (Watson, Militancy). Adopting a fantastical approach, this sonnet may also be constructed and used to cross borders.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, typed out 130 times consecutively, without any editing or deletion. Extending the mega-subjective notion of non-editing: process/mistakes as paratexts. “Error is everywhere in Tristram Shandy; it’s the most glitch-ridden book imaginable – it’s all glitch. Everything gets lost or misdirected; every action generates unwanted consequences” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
List of the last fourteen people deleted from Wikipedia (via Deletionpedia). See Gregor Weichbrodt’s Dictionary of Non-Notable Artists. Subjective judgement: what constitutes success? The impossibility of deletion: see CXXXIII, CXXVI. See also [7]
Fourteen letter Xs from Razzle magazine. Election day. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, LXIII, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLXXXI.
Fourteen lines about Logan Warmoth. Extending results from CLVIII. Effectively, a psychogeographical exploration of the internet: picking a random, ‘non-notable’ name, and co-opting its subsequent search results. Also: non-notability – see LXVII, CCLXXIV.
Fourteen more lines about Logan Warmoth. Extending results from CLVIII. Technical language, stripped of its usual contexts, thus simultaneously becoming impenetrable and simultaneously opening up new readings.
Fourteen more lines about Logan Warmoth. Extending results from CLVIII. The inherent vicariousness of internet society: the (empty) promise of “a few shots of the happy couple”. The same intent as Tom Friedman’s erased Playboy centrefolds: “Although Friedman studiously eliminates the original pornographic images of the magazine spread, he cannot entirely erase the sexual connotation from the imageless page” (Danto, Gagosian, pp 25). See also Ruscha/Dodgers Stadium referenced in LXVII.
Fourteen official descriptions of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Extending results from CLVIII. Suggesting the most banal and ubiquitous advertorial language can be read in a new way when stripped of its usual contexts.
The word ‘CATFISH’ twice, crossed. Provocation: a symbol of the Deep South, the positioning of its letters designed to mimic the stars on the Confederate flag. Defiantly political: mega-subjectivity rejects the concept of cultural misappropriation. Anything is art.
Definition of the term ‘eighty-six’. A play on the mathematical conventions of the sonnet, ie. 8+6. The broad definition – to reject/discard – chimes with ideas of disposability and impermanence. [5]
Fourteen words that rhyme with ‘sonnet’ (via Rhymezone). When the sound of a word means more than its definition. Sound is the only thing that unites these fourteen words – especially in light of their relative obscurity – but it is precisely that uniting factor, coupled with the intangible link-space in between, which optimises the reader’s thought-space.
Sonnet in 1238pt Times New Roman.
The first fourteen things that came into my head. See notes on CXXXVI: an attempt to challenge the notion, proposed by Genesis P. Orridge, that the subjective mind is incapable of absolute randomness. Clearly that is true, but the point is to prove that it is no less random than the cut-up, with its own inescapable subjectivities (choice of text to cut up, etc). Besides, surely those thought-gaps, those threads of meaning (however oblique) are what give such pieces their power? This is the essence of mega-subjectivity. [6]
Fourteen stills from live sex-cams. A sort-of imagistic infrathin: that intangible space between (in this case) reality and fantasy, as girls wait – often clearly bored out of their minds – in the hope of being paid to assume their avatars, and begin the ‘show’. Echoes of Nabokov’s ‘Ada’, in which Mrs Tapirov offers blooms of artificial flowers, each of which contain a single real one: “a real one pretending to be a fake one pretending to be a real one” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). See also Kola Kubes, LI; dancehall, CCXV.
Mega-subjective manifesto. Like Dada, mega-subjectivity exists at both extremes and in-betweens. Tristan Tzara wrote: “Dada applies itself to everything, and yet it is nothing; it is the point at which Yes and No, and all opposites, meet; not solemnly, in the palaces of human philosophy, but quite simply, at street-corners, like dogs and grasshoppers.” (Richter/Dada, pp 191)
Fourteen randomly-conjured collective nouns. See CLXIX: further investigation into the (apparent) randomness of the collective mind. Is there logic to these examples? Is there logic to everything if we dig deep enough? (see Dworkin, CXXXI). Also, how random are dreams? This sonnet was inspired by awaking with the phrase “an orgy of muses” in my mind. Why? Another space to plunder for mega-subjective means: between sleep and waking.
Random graph with fourteen points. Stripped of associative texts and integers, can something as basic as a graph provide subjective possibilities? On Kawara’s ‘One Million Years’ – in which a succession of volunteers sat in a glass box on Trafalgar Square and counted every number from one one million – attracted subjectivities all of its own: urban myths “about nightclubbers throwing kebabs at the box; drunk girls flashing their breasts; boys pissing against the glass..” (McCarthy/Jellyfish)
Fourteen lines from a Wikipedia page on hijacks. Hijacking has been hijacked: in the 70s/80s it was almost (with exceptions) romantic. “Hijackings were.. grand theatrical stunts.. In a post-9/11 world it is hard to grasp the extent to which the meaning of hijackings and the reactions of hijacked passengers have changed” (Irving, Khaled, pp 34-35). For example, (accidental) juxtaposition of hijacking and Demis Roussos, and flippant reporting thereof. Hijacking as aesthetic concept: “Detourner, to “deflect” in French, is the verb used to describe illicit diversions: embezzlement, misappropriation, hijack.” (Dworkin/Illegible, pp 13). See also piracy, LXXI. See also revolution, XXXVIII, CLV, CXLVII, CXCI.
Picture of Saab Sonnet. Ways of reading. One man’s poetry is another man’s car engine.
The word ‘Jeepers!’, repeated fourteen times. Truth and myth; the blur between ordinary and extraordinary. In August 1993, Tim Tomashek stepped out of the crowd to fight Tommy Morrison for the world heavyweight title. In a subsequent Letterman interview, Tomashek was ridiculed for repeating the word “Jeepers!” – as if language was incapable of describing such audacity. The myth (he was eating a hot dog at the time, etc) endures and evolves: myth becomes the new reality, ordinary becomes more extraordinary.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 using Google Images. Re-deployment of the generic and bland (see ordinary/extraordinary, previous): because the generic/bland arrives less encumbered with subjective contexts. Re-contextualisation of existing material. ‘True fiction’ documentary maker Asif Kapadia wrote: “We take footage – either sports, television, paparazzi or tabloid material – which already exists and give it a new interpretation, by slowing it down, zooming in, changing the colour… And I hope we’re giving a new meaning, perhaps something deeper and more aesthetic, spiritual, political, emotional.” For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX, CLXXXI.
Cannibal palimpsest. Attempt to display all those things the cannibal invokes: fantasy (1970s B movies); adventure (scrawled treasure map); escape (uncontacted tribes); the cannibalisation of others’ work (Picabia’s 1920 Manifeste Cannibale Dada). The themed palimpsest (see also CLV) introduces a form of subjective maximalism, an intense focus, which, contrary to those concerned with random generation, provides a much tighter but more defined space for (re-)contextualisation.
Google-generated route from Fryup to North Sentinel Island. The search for escape/wilderness. In a world where “there are no exotic destinations left” (Kuehn/Smethurst, pp 218), one option is to re-appropriate the banal (ie. Cortazar/Dunlop’s Autonauts of the Cosmoroute) – a tactic favoured by urban psychogeographers. The other (mega-subjective) option is to pursue the impossible: North Sentinel Island may boast the last untouched tribe on earth, yet Google Maps makes it accessible: both physically/voyeuristically (via photo zoom), and by the flaws in its own programme, which fail to recognise socio-political aspects of the (proposed) journey. Even more than North Sentinel Island itself, the real wildernesses lurk in these spaces and contradictions between what is possible/impossible and seen/unseen; in these islands between textual elements; in, perhaps, nostalgia (see CCVII). in the “warm glow” of “not belonging” (Sinclair/Orbital, p 19). See also El Salvador, XXV.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 in Telugu, over a map of North Sentinel Island. Sentinelese art must be the last non-contextualised art on earth: inspired/referenced by no-one and nothing outside the island. Does the idea of the existence of such art (which will hopefully remain just that) constitute art in itself? For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXXI.
Every letter in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, collaged from Razzle. An almost Lettrist attempt to break down the words and their attendant connotations, and contextualise each letter individually; underpinned by the obvious juxtaposition between classicism and trash/crass culture. Also, the more I re-appropriate Sonnet 130, the clearer it becomes that the content of the sonnet itself becomes irrelevant: it is merely the appropriative source which best serves to illustrate all the assumptions of the form. For Sonnet 130, see also: XLIV, CXXII, CXXIII, CXXX, CXXXV, CXXXVII, CXL, CXLV, CLVII, CLXXVII, CXXXVIII, CLXXX. For Razzle see also: XXXIII, XLIV, LXIII, XCVIX, CXXVIII, CLIII, CLIX.
List of fourteen owls you’ve never heard of.
List of fearful owl sightings in Fryup. More outrageous-fiction-as-reality: factually, the (endangered) fearful owl exists only in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. An almost impossible but not entirely unsubstantiable claim: like the opinion-as-adjective of the bird’s name (who says it doesn’t exist? Who says it’s ‘fearful’?). JG Ballard: “The writer’s task is to invent reality” (Ballard/Crash). See also LXVI; also Arthur Cravan’s list of improbable autobiographical claims in ‘Maintenant’ (Richter/Dada, pp. 85); Ed Ruscha’s ‘The Information Man’ (Richards/Ruscha, pp. 75) [7]
Sonnet World Cup. Inspired by a passage in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s The Bathroom, in which the protagonist “buys himself a dartboard…and, drawing on a round table columns representing different countries, plays out a darts “World Cup” – alone, of course.” (McCarthy/Jellyfish)
Fourteen stills from Youtube video of a Tilt-a-Whirl. “lol pointless vid of me&jen of the tilt-a-whirl.” The fairground ride representing a never-ending cycle of nomadism, with all its attendant Rabelaisian fantasies. See also ‘Dodgem Jockeys’, LX. “a regressiveness that partakes of infinity” (McCarthy/Jellyfish). See also CCXXVIII.
Fourteen foods I do not expect to eat today. After Georges Perec’s ‘Attempt at an Inventory of the Liquid and Solid Foodstuffs Ingurgitated By Me in the Course of the Year Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four’ (Dworkin/Conceptual, pp 477-482). See also: Macunias’ One Year – “a collection of empty cans, packages, cartons, etc., forming the trace of a year of his eating” (Macunias/Fluxus). What Kenneth Goldsmith calls “oblique autobiography” (Goldsmith/Uncreative): “By inventorying the mundane.. we leave a trail that can say as much about ourselves as a more traditional diaristic approach, leaving room enough for the reader to connect the dots and construct narratives in a plethora of ways.”
Vinyl record; list of fourteen past and present members of The Rock Steady Crew. Nostalgia as (mega-) subjective tool; or “collective nostalgia” (a sort-of retro equivalent of Fitterman’s ‘collective subjectivity’) – evoking long-dormant memories via exploitation of medium (in this case, vinyl); media (band names, etc); style; colour. In Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia, Andreas Huyssen wrote: “Nostalgia itself is not the opposite of utopia, but, as a form of memory, always implicated, even productive in it. [T]he ideology of modernisation.. has given nostalgia its bad name and we do not need to abide by that judgement.” See also CLIII, XXXII.
Vinyl record; lyrics from Eazy E’s ‘The Boyz-n-The-Hood’. See previous.
Vinyl record; lyrics from The Beastie Boys’ ‘Rhymin’ and Stealin”. See previous.
Vinyl record; lyrics from ‘The Great Adventures of Slick Rick’. See previous.
Statement by Patty Hearst over symbol of Symbionese Liberation Army. Speaking of the link between cultural and aesthetic revolution, Gerhard Richter (who produced the 18. Oktober 1977 Baader-Meinhof portraits) said: “Someone uses the most radical means, to try to effect change. This is not only understandable; it can also be viewed as the other side of the coin. Art is sometimes called radical too – except that it isn’t actually radical but only artificially so. That’s completely different.” (Richter/Oktober, pp 55) (See also revolution, XXXVIII, CLV, CXLVII, CLXXIV.
Panini sticker album with fourteen spaces. Nostalgia (see CLXXXVII). Emotions engendered by the blank spaces (obsession, jealousy etc): they matter more than the completed ones, which become immediately irrelevant; their identities (in most cases) meaning nothing. The pursuit (process) is everything: the finished product is largely inconsequential.
Fictional index. Paul Fournel’s Banlieue is blank but for “bibliographic accountrements” such as indexes etc. Paul Dworkin writes in ‘No Medium’: “Part of Banlieue’s conceit is that its form withholds a titillating content, hints of which the reader can only deduce.. The reader’s imagination, of course, creates more lurid scenes than even the most explicit prose Fournel could have furnished.” See also JG Ballard’s The Index, the “suppressed” (and wholly improbable) index to the life of one Henry Rhodes Hamilton.
Fourteen end-of-the-line metro stations. The frontier between urban and rural: names we see all the time but seldom reach. New suburbs, sparse fringes, faceless termini. First steps on a quest to escape familiar urbanity: adventure with the reassurance of being still-connected; still able to change your mind. “At the city’s often-threadbare fringes, there is an inescapable sense of lonesomeness.” See also ‘Tube O Nauts’ Travels’ in Fluxshoe/Mayor, pp 26: “On Thursday, October 8, 1970; a voyage into the London Underground System was undertaken, the conditions of which included the intention to take the 1st train past station “X” of departure, to remain in the system until the last train, and to exit again at point of departure.”
The first fourteen episodes of Huckleberry Finn and His Friends, with theme tune. (See CCCXV). As nostalgia (see CLXXXVII); as avatar of the urge to return to a semi-fictional and/or subjective wilderness; of the urge for adventure/escape. Each episode title, shorn of its respective plot, offers such subjective possibility. Also evident in Tracey Emin’s The Last Thing I Said To You Was Don’t Leave Me Here.
Fourteen porn parodies. Porn parody as paratext. In Playing Fans: Negotiating Fandom and Media in the Digital Age, Paul Booth writes: “[Porn] is both real and unreal, both overt and hidden. Pornography depicts some of the most basic human acts but in the most ideologically constructed way possible. It is fake reality, hard-core hegemony.” (pp 127).
Fourteen statements by finalists in Miss Mississippi 2017. See Fitterman’s “collective subjectivity” (VI). The banal as avatar for the unsaid (the state’s tumultuous social history, etc). Beauty pageants as avant-garde: see Rothfuss/Cellist, pp 18: “Classical music concerts, tea parties, and beauty pageants are all, fundamentally, performances. The power of [Charlotte] Moorman’s work as an artist lies in her fusion of these three old-fashioned modes of performance.. When she later married these with the novelty of experimental art, she invented something new.”
Fourteen Mississippi ghost towns. Reclaimed wilderness; adventure (both past and potential). Physical manifestation of the retreat from the urban. The Palmyra paradox: what once was always will be (see XIV).
Words and graphics concerning the computer game ‘Utopia’.
Invitation to a mega-subjective dinner party on the occasion of the 200th anti-sonnet.
Text/political map concerning Dagestan. (Source: Caucasus/Pereira). Poetry-as-maps. A deliberately flattened political map, simplistically drawn and coloured, juxtaposed with text illustrating a region of geographical and/or social tumult. Exposing the imperialistic shortcomings of the conventional atlas – effectively its ethnic cleansing – by re-framing it: removing (further) in order to facilitate deeper exploration. Socio-politically speaking, a reminder that the “wildernesses” of today (undefined/disputed borders, etc) are rendered so by political acts, not by the limits of navigability. In a Jacket2 series on maps, Dee Morris and Stephen Voyce wrote: “Like innovative poems, counter-maps are different documents: they disturb, distort, or disintegrate familiar forms in order to challenge habitual modes of thought… through which it is possible to understand our positioning within local, national, and/or global totalities.”
Text/political map concerning Gorno-Badakhshan. (Source: Wikipedia). See CCI. Furthermore: the attempt(s) to impose socio-political ideals upon natural phenomena (“Communism Peak”) – which, conversely, serves only to emphasise its futility: the mountain will (has) outlive(d) communism; it ignores tribalism; it out-lives all of us. A metaphor for the failure of collective thought: it survives by remaining individual to each of us.
Text/political map concerning South Ossetia. (Source: Caucasus/Pereira). See CCI.
Text/political map concerning Xinjiang. (Source: Wikipedia). See CCI. Furthermore: subsistence-as-adventure: “a new wave of neo-colonial expropriation” (Arrizabalaga/FUET). Alison Knowles on Make a Salad: “Salad is a favourite piece of mine and one that allows me to feed people. In 1962 I brought food as an offering to performance art… When I use the word performance it doesn’t signify any kind of re-enactment. It means doing something new each time, or with new ingredients, or with what I find in each city, and with new people to eat it. The whole thing is new every time. There is no acting at all in any of my works. I like the word activity – they are activities as in our daily life, where we make a salad. The confusion is that I’m an artist.” (Feola/Knowles). See also: CXXIV.
Text/map of Fryupdale. See CCI. (Text: Shining Path rhetoric, unsourced). The rural as base for (aesthetic) revolution. Juxtaposition of (and intangible space between) global aims and micro-locality. Semi-fictional element (“Fryup”) inviting other subjectivities.
Text/map of the North Sea. See CCI. (Text: Arctic/Jackson). Inspired by Art & Language’s Map of Thirty-Six Square Mile Surface Area of Pacific Ocean West of Oahu: a blank page, but for its paratexts (border, etc). Fade/blur: see CL. Exposing the futility of mapping the ‘blankness’ of the ocean.
Map of forest, overlaid with text concerning hunt for fugitive. See CCI. (Text: adapted from Pickering Gazette). Nostalgia: see CLXXXVII. Rural-as-aesthetic wilderness: see CLXXIX.
Names of the first fourteen nuclear test detonations at Bikini Atoll. Another example of hiding-in-the-act-of-showing (see also XIX, LXVII, LXXI). The limitations of mapping, and the crass inadequacy of language, underscored by the anthropomorphization of nuclear bombs (Charlie, Romeo etc).
Text/design from Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’. After Tom Phillips’ ‘A Humument’. A palimpsestic expose of faded old legends and the constant (subjective) creation of new ones: the iconic/ubiquitous graphic enhances its context. See also Fryup palimpsests CXLVIII.
List of ‘Mountain People of Kentucky’. (Source: Mountain/Haney).
List of prominent feuds involving ‘Mountain People of Kentucky’. (Source: Mountain/Haney). See CCX.
Fragments of text/images from Western annual. (Source: Hopalong Cassidy Adventures No 6). ‘The Gold Train Hold-up’. The cut-up nature of the piece invites the reader to piece together his/her own narrative; the surrounding blank space is one of possibility. Consequently, the reader becomes exposed to the temptations of the universal tropes of the Western genre: its discomfiting elements (racism, colonialism etc) re-emerge to challenge traditional assumptions.
Map/text re: Paraguay. The deadening language of modern travel: the (futile) quest for ‘off the beaten track’ now synonymous with the mundane (“ideal for those keen to get off the gringo trail”); the universal, algorithmic language of sex. Paraguay as metaphor for the mundane – “the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the infra-ordinary, the background noise, the habitual” (Perec/Infraordinary). Travel: see also XXV (El Salvador); Mundane/ordinary: see also CLVIII (Warmoth); CLXXVI (Tomashek).
IKEA text over photo of IKEA photo. The blurb sells individuality/eclecticism: “make your home instantly more you”. Yet it sells a mass-produced and cliched print of New York yellow cabs. I sought to expose this separation between object and aspiration by exaggerating it: first by photographing the photo in the IKEA shop, then by photographing the photo of the photo; each time draining it further of its advertised context, in order to expose our consumerist gullibilities. Removal: Gerhard Richter “overwrites our perceptual relation to the world by rerouting it through its glitch-ridden mediating screens” (McCarthy/Jellyfish).
Fourteen Jamaican dancehall artists. Fictional realities: the importance of cultivated image/avatar; an extra layer of distance (see CCXIV); also LI (Kola Kubes); CLXX (sex cams). Especially important in this particular culture which celebrates hypermasculinity. See also: ultra-stereotypicality.
SONNET CCXVI Shotcrete sonnet. “Shotcrete is concrete.. conveyed through a hose and pneumatically projected at high velocity onto a surface as a construction technique” (Wikipedia). Thus, I propose a ‘shotcrete sonnet’ as one converted to a pixel, then sprayed onto a page (in this case, using Gimp). An obvious derivative of concrete poetry, also including Al Hansen’s ‘popcrete’ series: “Hansen’s vocabulary and forms are limited to the words, numbers and lines (straight) on chocolate-and-silver Hershey Bar wrappers, which he transforms into dynamic visual poems” (Williams/Anthology). (Source text: Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130). See [8].
SONNET CCXVII Shotcrete sonnet. See CCXVI. (Source text: Wordsworth’s Nuns Fret Not..).
SONNET CCXVIII Shotcrete sonnet. See CCXVI. Source text: Millay’s What My Lips Have Kissed..).
SONNET CCXIX Shotcrete sonnet. See CCXVI. (Source text: WB Yeats’ A Crazed Girl).
SONNET CCXX Map of fourteen shipwrecks. Evocative names; romantic images of plundering and pillaging etc. See also pirates, LXXI.
SONNET CCXXI Fourteen Fluxus deaths. Extension of 4 Dada Suicides, emphasising the inherent nihilism of both movements. For all their avant-garde ideals, the perfunctory reporting (and consequently, archiving) of their deaths.
SONNET CCXXII Old Memorex tape with line from Sonnet 130. See nostalgia/music CLXXXVII.
SONNET CCXXIII Fourteen Taco Bell robberies.
SONNET CCXXIV Palimpsest of reports of Taco Bell robbery and apple pie-eating contest. “A palimpsest always enacts a double play of concealment and revelation, erasing one text to inscribe another and then suppressing the latter to display the first. The palimpsest obstructs to make a view possible.” (Dworkin/Illegible, pp 43/44). Apparently provocative juxtaposition: food robbery (desperation?) vs over-eating (gluttony?): yet the palimpsest denies confirmation of such conventional assumptions, strips the text of their essential, original contexts; so we cannot quite be sure.
Sonnet CCXXV Synopsis for Enid Blyton’s ‘Circus Adventure’. Blyton-as-avant-garde (!): Rabelaisian elements of circuses and puppet rulers; fantasy nations. Again, “removing to impose”: such a fantastical synopsis provides the reader with unlimited subjective possibilities.
Sonnet CCXXVI Titles of fourteen Gil Brewer novels. See kitsch, VIII. Could kitsch/pulp provide the answer to mega-subjective fiction: an unashamedly throw-away process (with attendant epitext of countless previous Brewer novels) borne of equal parts whim, fantasy and nostalgia? An art/writing accessible to all; the creation of its conceit/s plain to see; its actual content secondary to its invocations? (Why not stop at the titles? See [9].
SONNET CCXXVII Nostalgia/kitsch box. Inspired by George Macunias’ flux boxes containing random materials; also, his unashamed adoption of kitsch (see quote, VIII). These sonnets (“ZAP!BOXES”?) contain fourteen glaringly nostalgic/kitsch elements. Both nostalgia (as a powerful exposure of the self), and kitsch (as an extension of “art attitude” are valuable mega-subjective tools. Nostalgia: see Emin, CCXLII.
Nostalgia/kitsch box. See CCXXVII. Themed: based on a village show, thus introducing elements of Rabelaisian carnivalesque. See also LX, CLXXXV.
Nostalgia/kitsch box. See CCXXVII. Themed: seventies Venice/Muscle Beach. Faded/sun-bleached: see McCarthy/Richter, CL.
Nostalgia/kitsch box. See CCXXVII. Themed: Fryup. Truth/fiction; palimpsests.
Billboard: ‘COLD BEER & DIRTY GIRLS’. Prurience/temptation as avant-garde. Withholding the subjective image enhances subjective possibilities. Rabelaisian/’quasi-folkloric’ – see LX.
Billboard: ‘DO YOU KNOW JESUS’. See CCXXXI. Re-contextualising the controversial tenets of modern society (sex, death, religion etc); both as provocation and as insistence that it too – that palpable yet almost inexpressible ‘need’ – can also be re-framed as poetry; moreover, that its inherent emotions render it especially poetic.
Billboard: ‘BIKINI BULL RIDING’. See CCXXXI.
Sonnet for Marcel Duchamp. First of fourteen sonnets devoted to artists/writers. For all, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 acts as ‘filler’ text: language is secondary to their associated implications/contexts.
“Because of the rapidity with which the most defiant gestures are recuperated [see L.H.O.O.Q.] – the high-art status of dada’s anti-art statements being a case in point – effective revolution must be continuous…[they] should be a spur to the sbsequent detournement of [the artist’s] own diversions.” (Genette/Paratext, pp16/17).
Sonnet for Gerhard Richter. “The blur serves as a perfect general metaphor for memory, its degradation, for the Ozymandian corrosion wrought by time.” Richter: “I blur to make everything equal, everything equally important and equally unimportant.” (Both McCarthy/Jellyfish). See also CL.
Sonnet for Nam June Paik. “I take very cliched classical music and put some salt and pepper in.” (Lee/Paik pp 151). – see Charlotte Moorman on Paik’s Opera Sextronique. “In early 1963.. Paik announced that he would no longer compose or perform. He encouraged audience participation, explaining, “I am no longer a cook (composer) but a feinkosthandler (delicatessen owner).” (Rothfuss/Cellist, pp 84).
Sonnet for Ed Ruscha. “Words have temperatures to me. When they reach a certain point and become hot words, then they appeal to me… Sometimes I have a dream that if a word gets too hot and too appealing it will boil apart, and I won’t be able to read or think of it. Usually I catch them before they get too hot.” (Richards/Ruscha, pp 49)
Sonnet for Al Hansen. “Although [Hansen’s] collages, especially those made with Hershey wrappers, clearly partake of a pop art context, the banal association with consumerism is complicated by the overlay of 1970s sexual mores, art-historical references, and the flavor chocolate.” (Higgins/Experience, pp 138)
Sonnet for Yoko Ono. “Grapefruit is one of the monuments of conceptual art of the early 1960s, She has a lyrical, poetic dimension that sets her apart from the other conceptual artists” (Bourdon in Tomii/Ono, pp 26)
Sonnet for Augusto De Campos. “The true social mission of poetry should be the gathering of the latent energies of language in order to destroy its petrifying dogmas. In doing so it would vivify language” (De Campos/Coin, pp 169)
Sonnet for Boris Lurie. [Lurie] takes as his symbol the “girly” picture, America’s home-grown brand of pornography. Repudiating conventional manners, he shakes up the viewer [.] Lurie forces upon us the bitter vision of the cruelly smiling, heartless advertising pin-up girl. “No” appears in Lurie’s paintings: No! No! No! to the accepted, the cruelty, the desperation and despair which prevails, to conformism and the materialistic. It is a strong “NO” in a flood of mass-produced “YESSES”. And so: he tears the pin-ups; he tosses them down on his canvas to fall where they may. His stunning statement has been made” – Gertrude Stein.
Sonnet for Tracey Emin. “..major sculptural works are recreated from memories of good times and inconsequential things from places in Margate such as the theme park ‘Dreamlands’ or the beach with its pier, huts and tide markers” – whitecube.com
Sonnet for Benjamin Patterson. (See Patterson’s Lick Piece): “[P]ersonally, when making art (and therefore culture), I prefer to use humor as it often provides the path of least suspicion/resistance for the implanting of subversive ideas… The iconography does often depend on cheap, familiar, and kitschy materials… I believe that life can, or at least could, be simple. [..] I am not convinced that if there is something to be said it gains profundity through obscurity.” (Patterson FLUX/us pp 115).
Sonnet for Yayoi Kusama. “[in the 1960s] she began to stage “naked happenings”.. One of the events, “a sort of psychedelic pre-configuration of Occupy Wall Street”, took place in the famous New York financial district. Kusama issued a press release in which she suggested, in capital letters naturally, that her aim was to “OBLITERATE THE WORLD WITH POLKA DOTS” (Pilling/Kusama).
Sonnet for Nicanor Parra. “With his series of visual poems Artefactos (Artifacts), [Parra] annihilated sacred emblems of culture and suppressed, along the way, any idea of hierarchy by placing everything from pornography, to politics, to lyricism, to jokes, on the same plane.. eliminat[ing][ hierarchies of language” (Zurita/Parra).
Sonnet for Asger Jorn. “.. the journal Internationale situationniste (no. 3) proposes a three-dimensional novel, cut into fragments and pasted on bottles of rum, allowing the reader to follow its narrative at whim; [Jorn & Guy Debord’s] Memoires and Fin de Copenhagen essentially reverse this scheme, printing rivulets of rum on the pages of a fragmented novel.” (Dworkin/Illegible, pp 24).
Sonnet for Gustav Metzger. “[Metzger’s art], art that would change and disintegrate over time… stand[s] as witness to society’s capacity to engineer its own destruction through the development of weapons of mass destruction, the action of the Capitalist system and through damage to natural ecologies.” (Anon/Metzger).
Crete concrete Concrete Sonnet. Playful, literal interpretation of ‘concrete poetry’ (see Patterson/humour, CCXLIII). Mocking artistic desire to categorise. Anything can be poetry: Macunias’ “art attitude” (Williams/Mr Fluxus, pp 91).
Sound Sonnet 1. Attempt to juxtapose elements, chiefly of carnivalesque and nostalgia, as the “metarealistic trigger” (Higgins/Experience, pp 62). Also: challenging what a sonnet can be – still constrained (fourteen seconds); still meta-textual (exposing the process of its own creation).
Sound Sonnet 2. See CCXLIX.
Sound Sonnet 3. See CCXLIX.
Sound Sonnet 4. See CCXLIX.
Spearmint Sonnet. Inspired by the Fluxus use of food as a “metarealistic trigger” (Higgins/Fluxus, pp 62); notably Alison Knowles’ Make a Salad. Implying an aesthetic achieved through taste and smell, as well as nostalgia. Food (as well as sex and humour) is a particularly potent trigger due to its everyday associations (and attendant emotions).
Crispy Pancake Sonnet. See CCLIII. Also: communal practice as art; the responses (both anticipated and realised) to the gesture.
Mushy Peas Sonnet. See CCLIII.
SONNET CCLVI
Whipped Cream Sonnet II. See CCLIII. Also derivative of Benjamin Patterson’s Lick Piece (see CCXLIII). Silliness/stupidity as metarealistic trigger: the indication that art can be anything. Moreover: the anticipated responses to the audacious claim that such an action can be art (and/or a sonnet).
Fourteen Flux-Projects. Participatory (in an individualistic sense); designed to evoke the senses (sex, food, provocation, nostalgia); to foster an “art attitude” to the everyday – rhyme underscoring their inherent light-heartedness.
Sonnet To Be Read Aloud. In the sound tradition of Fluxus: collated onomatopoetic voice identifiers from the ‘RSPB Handbook of British Birds’. Thus repeated, they assume new, subjective meanings. The context-shift is evident even between reading and speaking: the ‘intertextual’ gap.
Sonnet inspired by Wikipedia’s Daily Featured Article: Gumbo. See De Campos, CCXL. Categorising words by sound rather than definition; in doing so, altering the contexts in which their accepted definitions are attached.
Sonnet inspired by Wikipedia’s Daily Featured Article: Grand Theft Auto V.
Sonnet inspired by Wikipedia’s Daily Featured Article: Morchella rufobrunnea. Example of a work whose finished product matters less than the connective process (morels-to-narcocorridos, and the subsequent flights of fancy (material or otherwise) it indulges and/or inspires in others.
Narcocorrido. Extension of CCLXI. Also: juxtaposition of polar opposites: sonnet/narcocorrido. Perfunctory violence. Extra context supplied by inconsistent metre/vocabulary, implying translation (and thus, exoticism).
Fourteen (mega-) subjective photographs. Random images drawn from nostalgia etc., designed to deflect upon the reader – the exposure of self serves as an example, not an answer. Inspired by Dana Teen Lomax’s Disclosure: “Identity.. is always nostalgic.. The work is.. a mirror into the reader’s subjectivity, trading the intimate details of Lomax’s life in exchange for disclosures about the reader’s most reflective prejudices and presuppositions.” (Dworkin/Goldsmith, Expression, pp 346).
Sonnet for Jake LaMotta. Literally, “language-poetry”. Identity: the boxer both projecting himself, and being projected, as something he is not. The ubiquity of quotes; their contexts (and veracity) becoming more uncertain with age, embellishing the myth-making: in this case, LaMotta as great champion and film star.
Sonnet for Leon Spinks. “Neon Leon” – a gaudy confusion of fame. Neon: flickering, garish, transient, costly.
Sonnet for Edwin Valero. Statistical greatness – an unbeaten record – masking personal turbulence. The title inspiring further investigation. See hiding-in-the-act of showing, LXVII.
Photo of New Frontier hotel being demolished. And with it, physical evidence of all the stories it contained – but not the memories. See Nicklas/Palmyra, via XIV. Casinos – see, conversely, XIX.
Browsing history prior to Sonnet CCLXVII. Revealing the semi-conscious thought-process: the subjective train of thought held up as a mega-subjective example, shorn as it is of any measurable or duplicative value.
Fourteen fictitious global sports teams. Fantasy-sports-as-poetry: the unashamed exhibition of another subjective taboo (like fantasy, nostalgia etc). Private desire rendered public. See kitsch, VIII. Also: globalisation; national stereotype/cliche; implicit hierarchy (why are all global sports names in English?) etc. See CCCXXXI.
Fourteen prospective “Mud-Men” movies. (Movies/unoriginality – see also: XXI). Create-your-own-franchise. Robert Filliou left a third of his book (Teaching and Learning as Performing Arts) empty. He said: “The reader is free not to make use of the writing space. But it is hoped he will be willing to enter the writing game as a performer rather than a mere outsider” (Higgins/Fluxus Experience, pp 188/9)
Fauvist sonnet.
Fauvist sonnet.
Fauvist sonnet.
List of fourteen tennis players who never won a Major. Non-notability – see also CLX, LXVII. Reversing sports-veneration: instead of listing the notables, highlight the (almost limitless) non-notables – all with stories still to tell (and/or imagine).
De-saturated sonnet (Sirens). Opposite of Fauvist approach. Robert Filliou left two thirds of his book, ‘Teaching and Learning as Performance Arts’, empty, in order for the reader to make use of the writing space (Higgins/Fluxus Experience, pp 188-9). This is the pictorial equivalent: invite the viewer to add colours of their choice, thus becoming a “performer rather than.. a mere outsider” (Higgins/Fluxus Experience, pp 188-9).
De-saturated sonnet (Sign). See CCLXXV.
De-saturated sonnet (Ginger Lynn). See CCLXXV. Also: prurience, nostalgia, carnivalesque.
De-saturated sonnet (Muscle). See CCLXXV. Also: prurience, nostalgia, carnivalesque.
De-saturated sonnet (Smash). See CCLXXV. Also: nostalgia.
De-saturated sonnet (Waltzer). See CCLXXV. Also: nostalgia, carnivalesque.
De-saturated sonnet (Wrestling). See CCLXXV. Also: nostalgia, carnivalesque.
Montreal sonnet (de-saturated).
Montreal sonnet (Cleopatra’s).
Montreal sonnet (departure board).
Montreal sonnet (Emanuelle).
CARNAGE/CARNAL/CARNIVORE/CARNIVAL. Rabelaisian etymology: proposal for a modern ‘carnivalesque’, in which grotesque realism is replaced with other, more fantastical extremes of stereotype, ie. silicone implants etc. See Kelly-Anne Davitt.
Still photo from ‘Fast Cars Fast Women’. Myriad possibilities dictated by context/paratext: is it a still from a stereotypical 70s porno, or, extracted from that environment, can the reader turn it into something else? In Michele Bernstein’s novel, ‘All The King’s Horses’ (1960), “The narrator.. encourages the reader to imagine for oneself what is left uncommunicated by the narrative.. Bernstein prompts the reader into projecting his or her own liberated sexual fantasies into the representative absence; however, there is no guarantee that this is what will happen. Bernstein’s restraint can be read as prudishly conservative just as easily as it can be credited with having pried open the door to transgression.” (Cooper/Sex and the Situs). Also: Fluxus-style participation: to smell/taste/touch, add stereotype?
Still photo from ‘Fast Cars Fast Women’. See CCLXXXVII. Prurience-as-mega-subjective.
Tabloid headline: “DEATH TOLL FROM MOGADISHU TRUCK BOMB RISES TO 85”. Hierarchies/parochialism/geo-politicism of media, etc. A bomb in Manchester = pull-out seconds; a bomb in Mogadishu = a celebrity fall-out. Also: vacuity/transience of celebrity: the pic comes from a random Google search for “sexy pic”.
Tabloid headline: “WILD ELEPHANTS ATTACK ROHINGYA CAMP, KILL 4”, juxtaposed with a picture of Cristiano Ronaldo raising a finger to his lips. Metaphor for media silence, hierarchies/parochialism etc (see CCLXXXIX). Juxtaposition of Ronaldo’s pay packet with a world in which elephants still kill.
Juxtaposition of Razzle cover with Sonnet 130. Inverse of Kelly-Anne Davitt’s Busty Babes on Bank Letters.
Sonnet in a Burger King cup. Nostalgia; carnivalesque (food). Also: use of sonnet for context rather than text – hence repeated use of Sonnet 130 – to provide that context and emphasise that its actual textual content is irrelevant.
Sonnet in a Crispy Pancakes box. See CCXCII.
Sonnet in a packet of peas. See CCXCII.
Sonnet in a packet of Haribo. See CCXCII.
Sonnet created (unintentionally) by my nine-year-old daughter. Saw this after watching a short video of Basquiat.
Epitaph for The Great Omani. Escape sonnet: Inspired by Ilya Kabakov’s escapist aesthetic (The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment). Also: challenging the Futurist implication of escapism as an extension of romanticism/sentimentalism (ie: a sedentary force for bad). Also: inspired by Rachel E. Foster’s “Mr and Mrs Houdini” (Bean/New Concrete, pp 92).
List of the first fourteen episodes of Man v. Food.
Fourteen screengrabs from the logo for Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.
Sonnet for Grace (Jones).
Sonnet for Grace (Jones). See CCC.
Bond Sonnet. Derivative of Clark Coolidge’s “Bond Sonnets” (Dworkin/Against Expression, pp 164). Bond as extreme stereotype: detournement of non-PC Bond tropes by over-exposing those most cliched, whilst accepting the early Bond movies were parodies of the genre themselves (Plenty O’Toole, Pussy Galore, etc). Variation on Goldsmith’s “hang[ing] themselves with their own stupidity” (Goldsmith/Uncreative).
Bond Sonnet. See CCCII.
Bond Sonnet. See CCCII.
Socialist Realist Sonnet. Socialist realism as extreme stereotype. Extreme juxtaposition – poetry with Soviet speech – raising the Fluxus notion of boredom-as-art. (nb – inspired by The Death of Stalin).
Text from Knowhere, with picture. Cliche/nihilism.
Collage of revolutionary literature. Rabelais/revolution. See also: XXXVIII, CLV, CXLVII, CXCI, CLXXIV
Five-second sonnet. Response to a Twitter post by Christian Bok: “Avant-grade poets now believe that evidence of “hard work” in the labour of a poem must signify complicity with the values of capitalism.” Bok seems to imply that “hard work” must be physically/visually manifested. What about thinking, copying/pasting etc – does this not count because it cannot be ‘seen’?
Fourteen ‘found’ words. See CCCXXI. Overheard outside a pub in York. Stripped of context, the words (and the phrase as a whole) can breathe.
Fireworks packet: Viper Rocket Pack.
Sex and Biscuits (three magazine covers). Consumerism; niche markets; neo-Rabelais (sex and food).
Fourteen Noteable Dates. Derivative of Seth Abramson’s The History of Dairy Queen; also Robin Crozier autobiography (untitled) in Fluxshoe/Mayor, pp. 24. Also Kay/Worldview: the inescapable-ness of subjective judgement. Language poetry seeks to reflect subjectivity using fragments/paratexts: mega-subjectivity does by reflecting nostalgia/ubiquity (sex, food etc).
Sonnet for Baked Alaska. Rather than juxtapose other words (ie. song lyrics) over the picture, inviting a paratextual juxtaposition (see Language poetry), by using what is effectively a description of the picture I shift the focus to the initial choice of Baked-Alaska-as-sonnet, and the signifiers therein.
Instructions for Toffee Cheesecake, in three languages. The shape of language: senses still evoked despite lack of (conventional) translation.
The first fourteen episodes of ‘The Littlest Hobo’. Multiple mega-subjective tropes: escape/drifting; nostalgia; cliche; re-contextualisation; etc. See also: CXCV.
Betting slip (14-1 shot).
‘Another Fucking Sonnet’. Exposing the laboriousness of process; buying into the Friedman/Fluxus notion of boredom-as-creativity.
‘Sonnet for Tarrah X. Matuseski’ – collage of sex-related junk mail. Lifting the ephemeral to centre-stage.
‘ROLEX-REPLICA-WATCHES’ – Sonnet-as-spam. The word “Rolex” triggered a bot which re-tweeted the sonnet, thus turning the sonnet into spam. Also: Temptation/consumerism; gullibility (“Roloex”).
Albion Rovers programme cover. Nostalgia/Perennial struggle.
Fourteen words of ‘found’ monologue. See CCCIX.
‘Uncooked Sonnet’: pictures of uncooked chicken, pile of bricks, alphabet and blank canvas. Art-as-work, and vice-versa: no different to cooking or building.
Sonnet typed by cat.
Lorca’s ‘The Faithless Wife’, locked.
Fourteen lines from RWS Bishop’s ‘My Moorland Patients’.
Yellow sonnet.
Green sonnet.
Pink sonnet.
Brown sonnet.
‘Found’ sonnet: yesterday/today/tomorrow.
‘Bobsled Time’: list of bobsleigh results. Perceived fine lines between success and failure. Build-your-own sports narrative: see CCLXIX.
Brightly-coloured cartoon.
Cartoon camouflage sonnet. See also CXXV.
Cartoon sonnet – sea/girls. Making blatant the supposed boundary between fantasy and reality – which one might mega-subjectively suggest doesn’t exist at all: ie. just because a fantasy does not manifest as material/physical, why should it not still exist? See also CCCXXXV.
Naked figure with cartoon letters. Variant of Ben Patterson’s ‘Lick Piece’ (see CCXLIII). Also see CCCXXXIV.
Advert: “FOR SALE WINTER TYERS”. Anything-as-poetry: mistakes/failure as evocative element. Also, in the context of the process, an advert-break.
Repetition: “Fuck your nostalgia”. Response to Ubuweb tweet: the handwriting itself inverts the sentiment. Moreover, the subjective differences inherent in each repetition: see Ron Padgett’s Nothing in That Drawer.
League Ladders. Nostalgia; also – paratexts inherent in their jumbled/irregular order; perhaps social elements affecting the order; in truth/fiction: in the shifting focus towards its subjectivity; its ‘author’.
Sonnet for Larry Clark.
Sonnet for Bikini Atoll.
Sonnet declaring The End of Poetry. Process; audacity: who am I do declare such a thing?
Toffifee picture/logo (“There’s So Much Fun in Toffifee!”)
The words in ‘Avalanche’, cascading down the page.
Sonnet retrieved from childhood.
Sonnet retrieved from childhood/Sonnet for Tiswas. See CCCXLIV; also, goo as Fluxusian/neo-Rabelaisian emblem: see Patterson’s ‘Lick Piece’, via CCXLIII; also “COLD BEER AND DIRTY GIRLS”, CCXXXI.
Sonnet retrieved from childhood: fourteen drawings of my Ford Cortina. See CCCXLIV
Sonnet retrieved from childhood: ‘We Are Going To The Palace’. See CCCXLIV
Map of micronations.
‘RETURN OF THE MEGA-NUDES’. Challenging PC attitudes to nudity, as well as the avant-garde difficulties with it, from Futurism through Situationism to Fluxus. Be blatant, over-the-top: see David LaChapelle, “hyper-reality”).
Fourteen contents of the Crackerjack Gunge Tank. Nostalgia.
Randomly-generated list of fourteen countries/territories.
Sonnet for the Dukes of Hazzard.
Sonnet for the Dukes of Hazard.
Sonnet from King’s Cross station (photo of orb light).
Sonnet from King’s Cross station (plaque).
‘Twerk Dancer / Unicorn”: Vis-sonnet inspired by Bot-retweet.
“Sights of Karakalpakstan”: fragments of text from website. Improbable tourism.
Script from ‘Carry On Camping’. Innuendo/euphemism as art. No pictures necessary – would impinge?
‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’, re-arranged.
Lyrics/pic from Eazy E’s ‘Merry Mutha***ing Christmas’.
Hand-written anecdote about a school ‘Christmas Jumper Day’. Inspired by Harmony Korine’s Collected Fanzines: handwriting (with its associated paratexts) as additional subjective/mega-subjective element.
Hand-written anecdote. See CCCLXI.
Hand-written/drawn anecdote. See CCCLXI.
Hand-written anecdote with photo. See CCCLXI.
Written list of acknowledgements to subjects of previous sonnets.
Pile of Sonnets. I resisted the temptation to burn them or throw them into the breeze: here, their subjective possibility is captured intact.
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