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Midnight Umbrella

The time at the tone is: --:--

“We’re so glad you’re here.”

Located in Worcester County, MassachusettsFrom Worcester County, MA

Set Syllables

FIVE. SEVEN. FIVE.

Circled handwritten poem draft on graph paper, with crossed-out revisions: In every desert I see you in gravel ghost and passing soft rains.
Set Syllables wordmark in white beside three rows of small dots on dark brown.

DISTILLING STORIES DOWN TO THREE LINES

Scrawled on scraps.

If you’ve made it this far, you might have noticed that much of my other design work is colorful, friendly…and ofttimes a bit verbose. Set Syllables was the first foray into a more subdued, deliberate style of writing and form making. I’ve always found writing to come more naturally than design, so over the years these 17-syllable poems have piled up in the marginalia of notes and on ephemeral scraps of paper.Haiku is a form of poetry that is self-limiting; it requires taking a scene, concept, or feeling and wringing out all superfluous information, leaving only the most emotive skeleton. While classic haiku involves deliberate seasonal metaphors and other literary parameters, to be honest I’m relying solely on the contemporary 17-syllable convention of form as a limitation to spur meaningful brevity.

Circled handwritten poem draft with revisions: A hurricane lantern's gentle sway in the gale's lull; Morse code on worn walls.
Blue handwritten poem: It's night time in summer and the cool air of evening sits quiet on the sill.
Circled handwritten poem on graph paper: In a strange place, the lingering fumes of incense and Earl Grey roses.

Five. Seven. Five.

EVERY SYLLABLE IN ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE

Each of the project’s initial poems features 17 concrete, and deliberately placed syllables. While some of the imagery wrought by the word choices may be overt, others simply attempt to convey a palimpsest of feeling, an ephemeral sight or sound. Like looking at a landscape through a cloudy lens.There’s something slightly contemplative about the scenes; something wistful, or reflective, or fleeting. They’re a grey-skied day; a slow exhale; a slice of frozen time steeped in wabi-sabi tinged imperfection.

Poem No. 001: amongst the ridgeline / wolves cast long ragged shadows / into the blue hour.
Poem No. 002: along a fencepost / three tattered swaths of fabric / collapse in the calm.
Poem No. 003: the cadence and din / as your feet traverse the floor / makes me feel safe.
Poem No. 004: on mealy concrete, / the serifs of a letter / slowly dissolving.
Poem No. 005: from drought, skeletons / of steamships rise anew from / muddy riverbeds.
Poem No. 006: accidental flags, / threadbare bolts of tattersall / are clutched in treetops.
Poem No. 007: in no man’s land sits / a bell—blistered verdigris / in splendid decay.
Poem No. 008: the asynchronous / song of an electric lamp / slowly waking up.
Poem No. 009: a brittle halftone / photograph turns to gray ash, / up and out the flue.
Poem No. 010: your timbre of voice / as soft ragged edges on / AM radio.

Set Syllables

Five. Seven. Five. That was the start. Condensing a tableau of palimpsest into seventeen syllables, Set Syllables is an exercise in brevity, in restraint of language.

Poem No. 011: behind thin, scratched / curio cabinet glass— / a worn brass tie tack.
Poem No. 012: we then intervened— / he effloresced, carried by / the cold, sweet salt air.
Poem No. 013: we see echoes in / quiet handprints in coal dust / saying “We were here”.
Poem No. 014: the protest and din / of a rising tide wanting / to extend its reach.
Poem No. 015: a mother bottle / feeds her out of focus child / beside the window.
Poem No. 016: a stained window pane, / your offset fingerprints stay / suspended in glass.
Poem No. 017: the tree-line in shadow, / roman candles bled starlight / from a darkened street.
Poem No. 018: out of tune warble— / all that the sea will offer / these tired stanchions.
Poem No. 019: a strand of spider / silk hangs from a citrus tree / as the sun rises.
Poem No. 020: who haunts a ghost town / when only shin-high weeds and / blistered paint remains?.
Poem No. 021: nighttime ritual: / set the hasp, engage the lock, / and pray for safety.
Poem No. 022: the ghosts of ploughmen / till cold soil until first light / all about the graves.
Poem No. 023: it’s nighttime in summer / and the cool air of evening sits / quiet on the sill.
Poem No. 024: through the wall of rain / I can hear the knell of earth / sinking to the sea.
Poem No. 025: up in the attic, / a message in pencil on / the knotted floorboards.
Poem No. 026: this abandoned pier / bears no ghosts save the lurching / dense vapors of fog.
Gray square with white serif text: “objects I recall: a diorama, a pin, and dented thimbles.”
Poem No. 028: about strange rooms, the / lingering fumes of incense / and earl gray roses.
Poem No. 029: I sense omens in / every wayward sound and light / this morning squall gives.
Poem No. 030: warding away ghosts, / well worn rocks on a railing / keeping watch ’til dawn.
Poem No. 031: in the rental hall / the off-kilter letterboard / announces events.
Poem No. 032: an old general / sleeps beneath the soil while his / salted fields remain.
Poem No. 033: and so each morning / a bus bruises the quiet / and takes me away.
Poem No. 034: a skulk of foxes / ’round a bowl of rotten fruit / as an evening dies.
Poem No. 035: a listing shadow, / scraps of pitted iron peer / above the cold swells.
Poem No. 036: an overnight train / hauling the equinox in, / crossing county lines.
Handwritten poem draft with revisions: Your fields of color, fluid arrows and letterforms, halftone faces smiling wide.
Poem No. 040, for Lester Beall: Your fields of color, fluid arrows and letterforms, halftone faces smiling wide.

THOUGHTFULLY EXPANDING AND EVOLVING

Breaking form.

After bringing a few dozen finished poems from scrap to screen, I wanted to infuse the project with some updated forms. Utilizing additional typefaces, color palettes, custom letterforms, illustration and other detailing let the words sit askew from their previously formulaic layout. It was a nice break from form, and a nice way for the project to stretch its legs. Additionally, having the poem’s letterforms textured, decayed and slightly askew felt like a nice subtle reinforcement to the actual written content.

Gray halftone poetry graphic with an orange circle: Halifax reports not one half-hour ago: “an unknown craft lands”.
Poem: I saw the old sun peel paint from iron letters that spelled out motel. Dark lettering on gray beneath a large orange panel.
Poem No. 043 beneath a large dark circle: old moon, hunger moon / the milk, mead, and thunder moons / long nights, waning soon.
Poem No. 044 beside thin geometric construction lines on dark blue: we went to Montauk / to hear the radar static / rise at Camp Hero.

PUSHING THE WRITTEN BOUNDARIES

New forms, too.

Since Set Syllables had expanded into a deeper range of visual forms, maybe it was time to push the written boundaries as well. In reality, despite my best intentions I didn’t fall perfectly in line with the 17-syllable restriction with each and every poem. Whoops.So what the heck then? Set Syllables now has the permission to be an umbrella for most written and visual endeavors I’m working on.

Hailstones typography study on black, with the word repeated, fragmented and rearranged in two columns of gray and white letters beneath a red heading.
Two columns of repeated steamrollers lettering, with selected letters emphasized in black and a red dividing line.
Poem in dark block lettering on gray halftone: You appeared to me—from afar we saw barn owls and a halftone moon.
Poem in white block lettering on gray halftone: Through hiss & hum of an old beige clock radio we wait for broadcasts.
Poem in three dark horizontal bands over a reflected landscape: My still orphaned heart / an oxbow lake carved cleanly / from the riverbed.
Circled handwritten poem draft on graph paper, with crossed-out revisions: In every desert I see you in gravel ghost and passing soft rains.
Poem in white serif lettering on dark brown: In every desert / I see you in gravel ghost / and passing soft rains.
Outlined block-letter poem on graph paper: I saw the old sun peel paint from iron letters that spelled out “motel”.
Pencil-drawn geometric lettering on graph paper: Sodium-vapor lamps, our new sunrise.
Sodium-vapor lamps, our new sunrise. Dark blue and red geometric lettering on a gray halftone background.
Circled blue handwritten poem draft on pale green paper, with syllable-count dots and revisions. The draft refers to thick gauze and reads: An ancient coffee can holds broken screws and twine.
Circled blue handwritten poem draft: Objects I recall: a diorama, a pin, and dented thimbles.
Blue handwritten poem on graph paper: The asynchronous song of an electric lamp slowly waking up.
Circled handwritten poem draft with a crossed-out revision: A small clock-wound key in a small brass dish.
Pencil notebook page with circled poetry drafts about listing concrete, pitted and ancient iron, and peering above the surf; lower drafts explore dawn shadows, crowns of phragmites and kings of fever swamps. Beside them is a page-layout sketch with nested rectangular frames, a small filled square and short text-line blocks. Crossed-out words and syllable-count dots show revisions.
Circled handwritten poem draft on graph paper: My still orphaned heart, an oxbow lake carved cleanly from the riverbed.
Circled handwritten poem draft with revisions: Accidental flags, threadbare bolts of tattersall clutched in treetops.
Blue handwritten poem drafts with circled revisions: In no man’s land sits a bell, blistered verdigris, in splendid decay.
Circled blue handwritten poem draft with a revised article and crossed-out line: The bones of a horse, blackened and picked clean by fire.
Circled blue handwritten poem draft with crossed-out revisions: Lantern light with a chorus of crickets, owls, and moth wings on windows.
Circled blue handwritten poem draft: Endless sheets of rain prove we will all be part of the sea in due time.