Poetry Jam 2020: Shakespeare

[lunabee34]

Our selection for this month is Shakespeare's sonnets.




September: W. D. Snodgrass' Not for Specialists

October: Toi Derricotte's Tender

November: Franny Choi's Soft Science

December: Pablo Neruda's The Heights of Machu Picchu

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

That is a very powerful line (from #9).

I noted (in reading the dozen or so were included in The Penguin Book of the Sonnet) that the rhymes are not complicated. Just the turns of phrases are, sometimes, very powerful. And I like the cadence and rhythm of some of them.

I did not know that about the Fair Youth or the lack of descendants. All interesting!

[executrix]

There's a bunch of them about his boyfriend copping off with his girlfriend, which would give you the blues, wouldn't it?

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Definitely!

[lunabee34]

I mean, he won't have children, he won't stop liking that other poet, now he's sleeping with the girl I'm sleeping with who I don't really like? Who does he think he is?

[lunabee34]

I like the rhyme in them actually. It doesn't feel forced or weird like it sometimes does to me in rhymed poetry.

There are some really pretty turns of phrase.