Quarters

The authors' collaboration on this piece was prompted by a Letraset visual poem by Beaulieu, “Self-Quarantine.” While thinking of the crowded space of arrows in that poem, they worked to engage with Unicode (and in particular, the four arrows U-2196–U-2199) in ways inspired by Beaulieu’s engagement with Letraset. The resulting poem is more sparse visually at any particular moment, but quite constrained and tense. The boundary will fill in in unanticipated ways if one simply waits. Those who are very patient will see that the process slows down as more and more arrow-shadows stick to the “walls.” The constantly-moving arrow leaves a trace wherever it bounces, but, as a glyph, it has a different substance than the edge of the browser, and cannot encounter its own residue. For those who crave an interactive experience, the poem can be interactive: Resizing the browser is an intervention.