Closing The Sonnet Series

Thanks for your attention.

Photo by Junseong Lee on Unsplash

I recently published the 100th sonnet of this series, and after doing work for the

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collaboration about “gatekeeping” and self-publishing, I have come to the proper decision to end this project.

I’m wholly tempted, like the Buddhist and their mandalas, to delete this newsletter and so remove all sonnets from their place on the server. They have served their purpose, so we’ll let them simmer for a bit, and then likely do so.

Below I’m going to layout imperfectly a reflection on these last three years, and if you happen to read on, thanks. But to all those who won’t read further, just a quick thanks for reading these sonnets and I was glad to create them for you.

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I began this series as a kind of personal blog and out of necessity to write. As I have explained elsewhere on this subdomain, I had entered into a strange vacuum with my poems, where I couldn’t gather them up into a manuscript, and I didn’t have the motivation to work toward their publication. The idea to write a sonnet once a week was a matter of output : getting back to the writing table and producing something.

It would also, as I said, form the basis of a blog to respond to current events and reflect on parts of American culture that I feel invested in. The sonnet form, incidentally, is a good form for that. It is long enough that exposition can enter into the poem, but short enough that you need to keep brevity in mind. It is song based, so rhythm and image need to be brought to bear before exposition, but a founding statement that engages in an act of critical thinking can often pop off the rhythms that support it. A well-done sonnet feels long when it is in fact short. That is because it transports the reader from start to finish, where they began was not where they ended. Often I have become lost in those lines, which was perhaps my favorite part of writing them.

From March of 2021 to the summer of 2023 I concentrated wholly on writing these sonnets. I consider it a very productive time, and have measured it a success. By “success”, it was how often I was engaged in writing the poems, how often I woke early to get to my table and do the painstaking work of poetry. Left only in this space to work, I found myself thriving.

That is, for a time.

By summer of 2023 I began to move back toward older work, and looking into the publishing world again. I had worked on a sonnet crown that I wanted to see published, and I also began finding new direction in my old manuscript. When I took time off the summer of 2023, it was to focus on that manuscript, and start seeing individual poems published again. This has been my focus more than the sonnet series, and I have since seen the work of putting out a fully fleshed sonnet go from 10-15 hours per week to more like 1-2 hours.

I suppose we should go where our work takes us. The work to create a sonnet for this space has become less interesting for me, and so I turn my attention elsewhere. Since the idea behind the series was to allow a space for output, and since now I’m returning into refining and publishing, the space no longer has a purpose to serve.

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The Douglas Adams line, “so long, and thanks for all the fish” keeps repeating itself in my head. I think that’s because the farewell of the dolphins as the world ends is a fitting analogy for closing this series and, in a short while, removing the subdomain from the server. It’s because we hardly ever allow things to be finished in the online space. The feed never ends, and as long as our brains can come up with content, we will digitalize it. We will instantiate our thoughts onto servers. Shutting this series down, and eventually removing it, is world ending. There’s a freedom there.

I find myself using the word “content” a lot. I want to talk about that, for posterity’s sake.

Before I deleted the Substack app out of frustration for the Twitter-feed they had prioritized over newsletters, I saw a Note “restacked” with plenty of hearts and hear-hears. The author I did not know and have forgotten, but the note has unbearably stuck with me:

Art is having something to say,
Content is having to say something.

This burned and bothered me for some time. It begins by hating binaries, as if we could live with them ( we can’t ). The definition as a juxtaposition and as a duality — a contrast — leaves out everything to say in the middle, the in between, where we live.

I also am presented with the moral imperative of “having to say something”, for speaking up. I think the inferred disdain for content is to say the imperative is to produce, instead of something worth showing. To this, I tentatively agree. Work must be done to produce content that is meaningful, even artistic, and a poorly written poem ( I will talk only in the context of poetry from here on out ) glibly posted onto a site is indeed only content. However, the necessity that drove the poem, bad though it may be, likely derives from an artistic impulse that shouldn’t be reduced.

I think the above should be modified, taking a cue from George Orwell¹:

All art is content, but not all content is art.

Art is interior and drawn by necessity. It has nothing to do with how it manifests in the world, once created. Once created, art is a form of content, perhaps purer in meaning to an other, or perhaps not. If you struggled with it and it was drawn from necessity, it would be art.

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I drew this series on a necessity, but now the terms of my life has shifted. What was once something I focused on a good 10 to 15 hours of my week has dwindled down to 1 to 2. My sonnets no longer have a stake to them, and thus become only content. To continue this series would be to continue it based on subscription numbers and working to attain the online status of Influencer, which was never the purpose of this blog. All that distracts from the actual writing of poetry, which is what I came here to do in the first place.

My final thoughts on the matter is I’m glad to have met you. Although you may have just subscribed, believe me, I was interested in your attention to my work and looked in at your work as well. I have made friends here, which is great, and as the poems of other poets in this space keep coming into my inbox I hope to keep reading them. And my mind is forming up on trying my hand at a formal space for poetry, something like a literary publication. But that will be on a different platform.

So you know, so long. Thanks for all the fish.

1. Incidentally, the line from Orwell, “all art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art” was quoted in my About page, which was the very first post and outlines the intention of this project. So here’s to properly bookending the project.