​Shakespeare, Sonnets, and Making it New

Ezra Pound and the call of Modernism:  "Make it new."

Side note:  I heart the Modernist Journals Project, and you should too.  ​  https://modjourn.org/

Responses in other genres: Jolene/Diane/Beyonce

Responses to/with Sonnets

Two notable examples from very different eras:

Anne Locke (1533-1590)--  A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner
Ted Berrigan's (1934-1983)-- Sonnets and the cut-up method

Shakespearean Sonnets, Background Info, and Form

Sonnet—Italian for little song
14 lines
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme
Iambic Pentameter
Octave and Sestet
Turn/Volta
 

• Shakespeare’s sonnets specifically riff on the more classical themes common in the sonnets of Petrarch and Philip Sidney. 
• They praised ideals and elevated love to the realm of the poetic.  Shakespeare sort of explored the path of love that was less travelled.  Lust, jealousy, obsession, etc. 
• Instead of writing to nymphs and beautiful women, Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets are mainly addressed to a young man/fair youth (the first 126) and a Dark Lady (the final 28).
• The first 17 sonnets are generally referred to as the procreation sonnets.

Sonnet 130

Synopsis (synopsis and text pulled from online Folger Shakespeare Library edition): This sonnet plays with poetic conventions in which, for example, the mistress’s eyes are compared with the sun, her lips with coral, and her cheeks with roses. His mistress, says the poet, is nothing like this conventional image, but is as lovely as any woman.


​My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
 
 
 

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
 
 
 

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound.
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
 
 
 

 And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
 As any she belied with false compare.

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"Dim Lady" by Harryette Mullen

Sonnet 29

Synopsis:
The poet, dejected by his low status, remembers his friend’s love, and is thereby lifted into joy.

 
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

​ For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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"Mixtape 29" by Scott O'Neil.  Who isn't a poet.
​And maybe wrote this last night.

Your playlist came in my inbox, my wreck,
Teeming with songs of sadness and ennui.
These classic bands like TLC and Beck,
Say you’re a scrub and a loser baby.
 
You aspire to be 30, Badflower,
Saying Garbage like you’re only happy
When it rains and singing in the shower,
Loser 3 Doors Down, in apt. not 2B.
 
Your tonal trauma clearly makes you hurt,
And while I am touched by what you have said,
And while I don’t want to be rude or curt,
You creep in the grief of your Radiohead.*
 
This pressure on my shoulders, I must say
I’m not Coldplay and can’t “Fix You” today.

Your turn: Choose either Sonnet 29 or 130 and make it new.  Keep a link to the core concept of the source material, but other than that?  Go nuts.  Respond to it.  Update it.  Go full Modernist and do a cut-up approach in some fun way.