Out of Sequence

Description Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed brings together 154 remixes of William Shakespeare’s 1609 sonnet sequence. If Shakespeare the auteur and his sonnets have influenced so much of how we think (and act) as humans, this collection asks how might we be un- (and re-) done by the conscious act of responding to (or through) these seventeenth-century verses. Here you will find a wide variety of remixes: entries various by their form — poems, short essays, comics, songs, and art; and various by their remixer — poets, essayists, artists, musicians, and scholars. Here you will walk into a queer utopia, a place where things and people touch, though they are too often taught not to. In these pages, Shakespeare meets Paul Simon and snaps selfies. He advertises on fast food billboards and watches Big Brother. He runs for town alderman and masturbates and shares custody of a child with an ex. In her afterword, Ayanna Thompson explains, "Remixing, by its very name, assumes that a queer blending already always exists (the mix). One is simply mixing anew what was already mixed up before; there is never an a priori moment in mixing." This collection remixes what we’ve always been consumed with, reaching back to Shakespeare’s "original" sequence, while also bringing to bare how that consumption is unique in the twenty-first century. About the Editor D. Gilson is the author of I Will Say This Exactly One Time: Essays (Sibling Rivalry, 2015); Crush with Will Stockton (Punctum Books, 2014); Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013); and Catch & Release (2012), winner of the Robin Becker Prize. He is Assistant Professor of English at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, and his work has appeared in PANK, The Indiana Review, The Rumpus, and as a notable essay in Best American Essays.