The Sonnet Sisters write themselves in this playful pair of self-portraits. Taking inspiration from self-timed photographs—making each sister both poet & muse—they create images that capture a meaningful sense of self, and conjure captions in rhyme & meter that speak to deeper identities.
In the following photos, warbling treefrog explores Hokitika Gorge, New Zealand, and the dithyrambler dances at Angel Falls Overlook in the Big South Fork. Sun & sky, color & place inform the poems accompanying the images—revealing how each sister sees herself within the natural world, inseparable from Earth.
All trees are travelers, Muir says, when they sway
on journeys there and back in strong windstorms.
I grip cool bark and blend with branches gray
to voyage wide but leave deep roots untorn.
On still nights, I await a gentler breeze:
the flutter of a moth’s swift velvet wings.
No howling wind, but cricket chirps I’ll seize,
imbibe the grace and song of fleeting things.
My voice carries to soil and tree top
fond odes to weather, bugs, and novel news.
Winged shadows may subdue but never stop
the lovers’ verse that treats the now as muse.
Beneath the wheeling sky, I’m starlight’s cog—
well-read and loud, an eastern gray tree frog.
–warbling treefrog
I am the dithyrambler, and I climb
to cliffside high, where water winds below
through rocky sandstone gorge carved out by time,
swift river bending, breaking—and the crow
I call—all cloaked in black—he answers back
as buzzards swirl around the clouds and search
for what can enter life, and so I ask
the sun to stain with light this ancient church.
No windows here; I breathe in open air
and move with grace when music meets the wing,
to circle round the mountains like a prayer—
my talismans hang down—I dance—they swing.
I am the dithyrambler, reaching sky—
above the blue, I see the other eye.
–the dithyrambler