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b&w sonnet no. 1

sonnet¹⁴

giovanni singleton is the author of AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper (Canarium Books, 2018) and Ascension (Counterpath Press, 2012), winner of the California Book Award Gold Medal.

About giovanni singleton

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About this Poem

“If one definition or translation of ‘sonnet’ is ‘little song or sound,’ I wonder what song could be smaller than that of its own name? ‘b&w sonnet no. 1’ explores the tones and textures of this popular form for about fourteen seconds. Sounding its name, its essential nature emerges. Refract the rhyme scheme into repetition. The exponent of fourteen ‘lines’ sits slightly above, as if a volta, a hat, or an antenna, attending to whatever it encounters from the airwaves. A song requires an ear, after all, even if it’s an eye. See, sound, and sing for yourself. Petrarchan, Shakespearean, Spenserian, Miltonic, holy, half, skinny, curtal, double, American, puffy, deconstructed, crown of. . . And, at the end of the day, who among us doesn’t just love a good sonnet?”
—giovanni singleton

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b&w sonnet no. 1

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b&w sonnet no. 1

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