Abstract
This article focuses on Bill Griffiths’ poem-sequence Binaries. Not
Sonnets, published in an Etruscan Reader in 1997. It considers how the
text relates to the wider sonnet tradition given Griffiths’ own hostility
towards the form. Two earlier ‘sonnets’ by Griffiths prove purposeful
interventions into inherited reading practices, a methodology employed
more extensively in Binaries where Griffiths playfully activates the ‘not
sonnet’, an impossible form which calls up the sonnet at the same time
as denying it. A reading of the frontispiece to Binaries shows how the
text relates to Eugen Gomringer’s notion of the ‘constellation’ and
Griffiths’ peculiar use throughout the poem of the double equals-sign is
considered in the light of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity (1933),
a work that resonates with many of Binaries’ structural and ethical
concerns.
Sonnets, published in an Etruscan Reader in 1997. It considers how the
text relates to the wider sonnet tradition given Griffiths’ own hostility
towards the form. Two earlier ‘sonnets’ by Griffiths prove purposeful
interventions into inherited reading practices, a methodology employed
more extensively in Binaries where Griffiths playfully activates the ‘not
sonnet’, an impossible form which calls up the sonnet at the same time
as denying it. A reading of the frontispiece to Binaries shows how the
text relates to Eugen Gomringer’s notion of the ‘constellation’ and
Griffiths’ peculiar use throughout the poem of the double equals-sign is
considered in the light of Alfred Korzybski’s Science and Sanity (1933),
a work that resonates with many of Binaries’ structural and ethical
concerns.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | Volume 6, Number 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 65-83 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2014 |
Keywords
- constellation • Bill Griffiths • Korzybski • not sonnet • sonnet
