the Secret Society of Stealthy Sonneteers

[jjhunter]

Society members by code numbers: 9 – ardyforshort; 16 – fyreharper; 24 – J.J. the Pointed Verse of Reasoned Debate; 28 – firecat; 29 – untonuggan; 34 – okrablossom; 35 – Pau Amma; 40 – bookblather; and 41 – primeideal.

"There's something intimate about secrecy. When someone glances about and lowers their voice, you instinctively lean in. Whatever it is that the two of you discuss, your soft-voiced conversation creates a illusion of a private space, one set apart from the crowded world outside.

"Let's create such a space here [...]" Thus begins the Covert Collaboration Challenge, "a little experiment in secrecy as a recipe for intimacy". Over the course of a week, myself and my eight fellow Society members wrote two original sonnets; the majority of the lines in each were written with only one to two preceding lines for reference, and in the case of the second sonnet, the prompt ("spontaneous musicals, or What if life was more like theater?'").

==

METAMORPHIC UNDERSTANDING


I study you, re-view, learn one fact more
Geology of body, face, and time
Show twisted veins of life's remember'd ore
Recalled as gold, no longer worth a dime
Tis trash or treasure, turning with the tide
And trash to treasure turns the Midas eye
Until what has been thrown away outside
Becomes engulfed, and gleaming troughs rise high
So furrowed brows relax into delight
And arms unfolded show beneath your skin
What's drifting downwards, what had been uptight
Now lapping back, looped deeper, found within
All life is change, as all that grows is changed
Light glinting from perspectives rearranged


==

HELLO, TROLLEY


A supermarket aisle is, too, a stage
We moan high prices, sing out each great deal
Excelsis Savings! Fruit is today's steal
And lemon drops: a treat for any age!

A song bursts forth within the batting cage
Of joy foretold in making tonight's meal
And rudeness met with sly banana peel
the little pleasures make a living wage

So life is joy, and joy is life unbound,
with sweeping gestures, dance and song and jest
To lift the happy, comfort the distressed

Who yelled at their child after one of those days,
Extol the virtues of beef cut in the round,
Of checkout baggers sing sweet songs of praise.


===
All are welcome to comment and discuss. Society members, was this experiment successful in fostering intimacy? Do you have any favorite exchanges or quotes you'd like to share from our Top Secret discussion threads?

Comments

[okrablossom]

I wonder was it because you felt the need to start closing the poem down rather than writing in just any direction? To me that seems natural, to want to tie up the sonnet :)

[jjhunter]

24 says: "Yes! The final contributor to each sonnet got to see all the previous lines up to that point."

24 says: "But as Pau Amma notes, knowing the big picture doesn't necessarily make it easier - the Society member who finished the other sonnet mentioned that it felt intimidating."

[pauamma]

Hmm. That may have contributed to it, but I think it was more being able to decide where to take it (tone, register, theme/imagery) in light of what came before. It may be that having the whole text was more than needed, and I'd like to try it again later, with something about as long or a bit longer as the chunk assigned to me, and 1/3 to 1/2 in size of the chunk already written. So, if I was assigned line 3 or 4, just the previous 1 or 2 lines. For lines 9-11, the previous 3-4 lines. For lines 12-14, the previous 4-6. (For 1 or 2 of lines 9-14, use the lower bound, 3 or 4.)

[jjhunter]

24 says: "Intriguing suggestion."

24 muses: "I wonder what this implies about how meaning is chunked / developed over the course of different types of sonnets..."

24 asks: "Do you think subsections of particular rhyme scheme patterns make useful containers for pacing out the development of the sonnet's meaning(s)?"

[pauamma]

Maybe. They would roughly match the chunks I was thinking of in size, but I'm not sure how they'd compare to the contiguous chunks I was thinking of, for the discontiguous rhyming chunks in a given scheme. I think we need more experi(ment|enti)al data. :-)