555

0.227  is…
submissions as batting average
— 4 May, 2017 —
74% published/forthcoming (412 sonnets) in;

A Literation
Altered Scale
altpoetics 1 & 2
Anti-Heroin Chic
Aubade
BlazeVOX
Brave New Word
Cartagena
Children, Churches, and Daddies [5@once, 1 2 3 4 5]
Counterpunch 1 & 2
Country Music Poetry
C.O.R. (1+2+3)
eccolinguistics 3.3
Eunoia 10 in April, another 10 in October 2015, another 10 in March 2016, ad another 10 in December 2016 (link starts with the last, scroll back to read them all)
Extreme Writing Community
Eyedrum Periodically
Five-2-One once, twice
Fractal
Futures Trading (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7)
The Gambler (1 & 2)
GTK #6 (print)
Helios Mss
Hobart
Howecycle
Jazz Cigarette
Jet Fuel Review
Literati
Loose Change
Mantis (Issue 14, print)
Map Literary
Map Points
Miscreant
Moss Trill (1, 2, 3, 4 & 5)
Modern Poetry Quarterly Review 1 & 2
PoetryWTF (1+2 & 3+4+5 & 6+7 & 8+9 & 10+11+12, & 13)
9th St. Laboratories
Oddball
Oddity
Of/With
The Oklahoma Review
Otoliths (1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5)
Pismire
The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society
ReallySystem
Revolution John
shuf (issue 6)
Slim Volume
So & So Magazine
Sonic Boom
Stride
Sugar Mule
Text
Unlikely Stories 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5
Uut (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29)
The Virginia Normal
Window #3-Flux
Whiskey Island #65 [print]
Wild Quarterly
Word Bohemia
Word/for Word Vol 26
Work Lit Mag
The Writing Disorder
Writing Raw
Yellow Chair #6 p68
Zoomoozophone

My Interview at Uut Poetry
…is largely about 555 and goes into many details that this page does not touch on. It is split into four parts — ONE — TWO — THREE — FOUR

Note on the Text, No. 3
f: (Rage + Database ÷ Shakespeare ± Fuckery) → ≈ (¬ Expectation, ⊧ Poetry)

Note on the Text, No. 2
These 555 sonnets are made with found lines and precise measures, a database and text analytic software. I crunched Shakespeare’s sonnets for word, syllable and character averages — my new measures. The lines oddities are theirs, their arrangement is mine. After the text analytics and data entry is done, myriad ways of assembling are found. I hold to the turn (when I think of it) and that sonnets are poems of a certain size, but little more. Something in excess of the lines pass through, it’s this that I’m chasing.

Note on the Text, No. 1
555 is a collection of sonnets whose construction is database-driven and relies on text analytic software. I crunched and analyzed Shakespeare’s sonnets to arrive at averages for word, syllable and character (inclusive of punctuation but not spaces). These averages (101 words, 129 syllables, 437 characters) became requirements for three groups of sonnets.Every sonnet matches its targeted average. I collected lines from anywhere and everywhere in the air or in print in a database. The lines are all found, their arrangement is mine. Values for word, syllable and character were recorded. Typos and grammatical oddities were preserved; only initial capitals and a closing period have been added as needed. The selection of lines isn’t rule-driven and inevitably reflects what I read, watch, and listen to, thus incorporating my slurs and my passions as well as what amuses and disturbs me. These sonnets were assembled using nonce patterns or number schemes; by ear, notion, or loose association; by tense, lexis, tone or alliteration.  Think of Pound’s “dance of the intellect among words” then sub sentences for words—it is amongst these I move. The dance in question traces out a knot (better yet, a gnot) that holds together what might otherwise fly apart. I espouse only the sonnets, not any one line.

F—A—Q

Why are there 555 sonnets?
It must be because of the microwave. No reason precisely, a swarm of relations— symmetry as heard and read — mechanistically precise, but not going anywhere immediately obvious (in the sense that 500 is half of 1000, or 999 is at the border but not there, or even 333 projects 666 and 999). It’s an odd number and picks up its first equal split at 3 — which made it handy for three groups of sonnets based on the averages for word, syllable and letter. It also suited a pre-project feeling about the size of book that I wanted to make, its hypothetical material density.

Are there 555 sonnets? 
That will be the number in the hypothetical book of them. And for awhile there were that many. But I’ve begun to revise some of them and to write new ones, figuring I’ll cut back to 555 when the time comes.

Why are they sonnets?.
I’m trusting to the numbers I arrived at by averaging Shakespeare three ways to keep me in the ballpark every time. Rhymes are nice sometimes, but rhyme schemes don’t interest me. Basically I think there are more interesting ways to think about the sound of poems than most thinking in terms of rhyme allow for, and one is not beholden to thinking about sound in any one way at all. Meter though, that’s a different story. Meter is a fantasy of linguistic substance — an ideology in the worst cases, but always deluded in whatever form encountered. I believe very much in the materiality of the word, but not in this hackney’d ‘for dummies’ version of it.

Why Shakespeare?
He was a very handy canonical yardstick, with name recognition. Nothing more than that.

Why are they all untitled?
If one of my sonnets is like a hole in the ground, I wouldn’t want a sign warning everybody off, or telling them what’s down there, or repeating the 1st line. Each rung (line) I found somewhere and hammered in just so, that way anybody can climb down if they want.

Why are there no question marks?
I don’t know why I started changing them to periods, but I did and just trusted it. If there is a question to be heard in a line, it still gets heard, but the period makes each one more like a thing for me somehow, like stones to cross a stream of lava/jello/sewage.

Is it all web-sourced?
Not at all. There are many lines from books, fewer from magazines and comics, also films and video (transcribed) as well as from listening in public. But I use the web a great deal too. There are ancient sources and well as scatterings through history but the bulk probably have late 20th and early 21st century origins.

Do you keep track of the sources?
No I don’t. I generally prefer the poems be in the foreground and the sources to be opaque, but since I’ve begun submitting them I’ve discovered a number of venues where somewhat similar work with source texts is the house specialty and where sources are included as a matter of course. For those I have tried to recover or refabricate what I can.

What’s with the batting average and percentage published?
Well the whole process has a ton of counting so I added more. Plus I liked the idea of a bare number like a batting average to keep track of submissions. And yet, I treat one submission regardless of how many poems involved as an ‘at bat.’ Like those thermometer-looking things they use to show you whether the donation goal has been reached (operators are standing by).