Amaranth Borsuk Publishes “Curt Curtal Sonnet Corona”

On January 15th the Quarantine Public Library released a new slate of free printable chapbooks, including IAS faculty member Amaranth Borsuk's "Curt Curtal Sonnet Corona," a series of programmatically-generated curtal sonnets. QPL publishes artists' books designed for a single side of an 8.5 x 11 page which readers print, fold and cut using a simple template. Founded in May of 2020 by artists Katie Garth and Tracy Honn as a gift to share while "many of us are staying at home, disconnected from art, books, and one another," all publications in the library are free, and any donations go directly to non-profit EveryoneOn, which connects low-income families to affordable internet service and computers. Download "Curt Curtal Sonnet Corona" and many other great little books at the QPL website.

The curtal sonnet, developed by Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, is a 3/4 abbreviation of the Petrarchan sonnet in which each section of the form is proportionately shortened: the octave becomes a sestet, the sestet a quatrain with an extra tail. Writing in December of 2020, Borsuk chose the form as fitting for both the small booklet format and her own feelings about the end of a very difficult year. The underlying code is adapted from artist Nick Montfort's "Sonnet Corona," a sonnet generator published at the start of the pandemic, which Borsuk's BISIA 310 students tinkered with this past autumn while reading Lillian-Yvonne Bertram's Travesty Generator, a book of computer-generated poems that addresses the cultural codes of racism and white supremacy. Borsuk's poetry generator can be accessed at her website.