Thursday, March 14, 2013

CUTTING IN: SEA AND SPAR BETWEEN

As the DEAR NAVIGATOR site states:

"Sea and Spar Between is a poetry generator which defines a space of language populated by a number of stanzas comparable to the number of fish in the sea, around 225 trillion. Each stanza is indicated by two coordinates, as with latitude and longitude. They range from 0 : 0 to 14992383 : 14992383."

and:

"The words in Sea and Spar Between come from Emily Dickinson’s poems and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Certain compound words (kennings) are assembled from words used frequently by one or both."

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There is a strange beauty built into the fabric of these stanzas. Some work better than others, but they each sing a note that is in harmony with their source works and with one another.

This is a map of sorts, meant to be viewed. This is a sea of sorts, meant to be navigated. This is a landscape of sorts, meant to be wandered.

I am adrift, floating, staring up at constellations of words.

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Sea and Spar Between
by Nick Montfort and Stephanie Strickland
http://blogs.saic.edu/dearnavigator/winter2010/nick-montfort-stephanie-strickland-sea-and-spar-between/