When I was an undergraduate I had very badly annotated editions of Shakespeare's sonnets, all of which left out the important fact that will has a sexual sense in Shakespeare's sonnets.
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Me Shakespeare
Now I can writ dees sonnets too
Wit all dat poem and rhymin stuff
Jus like that Shakespeare buckaroo
His masterpieces ain’t dat tough
Dat Shakespear guy was pretty strange
He writ his stuff wit fedder quill
His underwear he’d never change
Dat was da secret to his skill
Now if ya think I’m foolin; hay!
Jes try ta read his garbled mess
Dat Shakespeare guy was really gay
A closet queen who wore a dress
So common guys, read my sonnet
Not dis guy in heels and bonnet
poem by Amera Andersen
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I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.
quote by Diane Wakoski
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Shakespeare’s Sonnets
I think about my sweet parents, now old,
And myself, every day growing older,
Hoping to create a gentle and tender essence
That will survive when we part this existence,
Like Shakespeare’s sonnets written four hundred years ago
Still leaving a magical afterglow
For lovers and poets yet unborn.
poem by Uriah Hamilton
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The Torture Will Be Sonnet-Drip
'Aha! Game's afoot, Wats, ole boy, ole pal.
What's this? Words on the people-page,
which had no use for them?
Agog! Magog! Then why did readers
read that rubharb? Aha! Googa! '
Puff, puff, shuffle of schematic rhyme,
time, chime, not fine, and definitely
sublime, went off the balconey, haughtily.
'Sonnets' upon us! Run from the dulldom!
Ten speed! Always the ten speed! Where's
the racer with fresh motion, ignoring
the notion 'sonnets' sacred cow must
be fed with musty, rancid, green-globby
fungus of yesterday's literary world? ' '
'Wats, here's the plan, the ruse, the
gag for the 'in a literary rut' writers....
in the dungeon with them all!
And, slowly....so slowly....drip words
of the 'sacred cow' upon their forehead.
Sonnet-torture them all! Which sonnet writer?
Shakespeare, Petrarch, Spenser....all
the ones who statically stay the same
for all time! And....are....worshipped.'
poem by Elysabeth Faslund
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In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.
quote by Harold Bloom
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Shakespeare that Shakespeare became is the name that's attached to these astonishing objects that he left behind.
quote by Stephen Greenblatt
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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That you have taken her from me
That you have taken her from me
while I loved her truly
as if she was from marriage free
as if she could belong to you duly.
It is not just an insincere thing
but to do so under the cloak of friendship
is something that pierces with its sting
like being sacrilegious during worship.
You did something ungodly
and smiling knifed me from behind,
never were your intentions to be kind
and gladly you acted mercilessly, even deadly:
Hers, by falling for you and by being to me untrue.
Yours, by giving me what wasn’t due.
[References: Sonnets 41 & 42 “Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits” and “That thou hast her it is not all my grief” by William Shakespeare.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Sonnet In Old Age
THE SONNET IN OLD AGE
If to the sessions of sweet silent thought
one summons memories of sonnets long reread in mind
unsprings the blasted lyrics Time has left unpaged
dreams of other nights and other days
in quiet places long since lost in youth
where little lines embodied- Glory, Beauty, Truth.
Then Shakespeare Donne Keats,
Hopkins Milton Wordsworth Yeats
Obscuring lesser names and smaller shades
Inspire with dearer dearer life
Tranquillity's reflection
in old age,
Consoling our last moments
in God's praise.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Sonnet Minus One: A Jest [Acrostic on THIRTEEN LINES]
This is not a sonnet, can’t you tell? It
Has a line less than it should, for, hell, if
I am to be printed in this broadside,
Rules require the lines to number oddly.
This allows me eight lines at the first, but
Even though my rhyming is well-versed, as
Every critic knows the issue’s passed, that
Never will this poem be a classic.
Literati want their sonnets catholic
In the best King’s English Shakespeare hath, and
Not the three-legged race this thirteen-liner
Eggs the couplet-craving crowd unraveled:
So, I scorn to tread the road more traveled.
poem by Richard St. Clair
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Sonnet On The Sonnets On The Sonnet
Some sonnets upon sonnets poets write
Offering examples of their skill,
Need neither censure nor false praise to fill
New chapter, verse, in ego's copyright.
Encapsulation through a structure tight
Turns a neat phrase avoiding overkill,
Or temperature tests, unbiased will
Nature, Man, describes in terms polite.
Sense and/or sensitivity, insight
Ordered, bordered, mission may fulfill,
New bark on old folds sundry thoughts that spill,
Netting beauty, spelling out delight.
Emotions through control find freedom which
Triumph over prose prosaic [p]itch.
poem by Jonathan Robin
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Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
poem by William Shakespeare from Sonnets (1609)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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The Poem Of All The Places I Have Never Been
THE POEM OF ALL THE PLACES I HAVE NEVER BEEN
The poem of all the places I have never been
The poem of all the dreams I have not seen
The poem of others poems written in lines I have never imagined
The poem of the infinite – what-is- not and ‘what- will- never- be
The poem of seas and suns and sounds and Shakespeare’s sonnets,
The poem of words and only words whose sounds do not mean what we feel
The poem of all I would not and cannot write
The poem that is not and never will be in me
The poem I do not write
The poem I am not
The poem lost
The poem which itself is not a poem
The poem of the last contradiction and the first
The poem beyond the poem hidden within the poem
The poem which will never be a poem
The poem which is not
The poem I cannot dream.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Sonnet # 155
Ah witty Shakespeare in whom I delight
At last by numbers paired
To thee good sir I say well met
Thine own pinnacle now we share
O' the quills I hath retired
In pursuit of this noble quest
Stanzas, mirth, and sorrow writ and
As thee sonnets penn'd at love's behest
I shan't let admiration wane
Great mentor in the ways of rhyme
From thesbian lips thy words to wit
Spake thee the heart and soul of human kind
O'Mystic Bard let thy spirit heed
Twas thy works alone that reveal'd the muse in me
poem by John A. Hancock
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Sonnet 21
So is it not with me as with that Muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven itself for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems,
With April's first-born flowers, and all things rare,
That heaven's air in this huge rondure hems.
O! let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother's child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air:
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
poem by William Shakespeare from Sonnets (1609)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Poets of Great Renown
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
and William Wordsworth were
eighteenth-nineteenth Century
British Poets of renown...
they collaborated in fine
lyrical ballad style, both
loving the rhythm and rhyme
of Shakespeare, his sonnets
and his plays.
In seventeen ninety six
Wordsworth and Coleridge met,
becoming 'poetry' friends,
but sadly with time their
friendship ended.
I quote just four lines from their
lengthy poem of imagination..
The Ancient Mariner.
'He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small
For the dear God who loveth us
He made ~ and loveth all'
poem by Joyce Hemsley
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Sonnet 87
Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing,
And like enough thou know’st thy estimate.
The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;
My bonds in thee are all determinate.
For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,
And for that riches where is my deserving?
The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,
And so my patent back again is swerving.
Thyself thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing,
Or me, to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking;
So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,
Comes home again, on better judgment making.
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:
In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.
poem by William Shakespeare from Sonnets (1609)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Poems and Poetry
I sat staring
At my blank writing pad,
With pen in my hand.
It was a poetry workshop,
We were told
To try different structural forms:
Epigram, Sonnets, Limericks,
Lyrics, which could be set to music.
But I admit, I just
Can’t write on demand.
Is it a mental block
Which I can’t unlock?
It becomes difficult
For me to make a start.
As I just write from the heart.
But I don’t argue
These are Classical forms,
Which require skill
To write within the confines
Of prescribed norms:
Meter and syllable count.
It does lift
The work from plebian
And adds spunk
To stimulate readers mind,
As I find
When I read works of Shakespeare
And others of his kind.
poem by Mamta Agarwal
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Shakespeare is like the world, or life itself. Every historical period finds in him what it is looking for and what it wants to see.
Jan Kott in Shakespeare, Our Contemporary (1964)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Sonnet 105
Let not my love be called idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone,
Which three till now, never kept seat in one.
poem by William Shakespeare from Sonnets (1609)
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Shakespeare Wrote A Poetry
SHAKESPEARE WROTE A POETRY
Once upon a time
Long before I read
Shakespeare wrote a poetry
No one shall see
The like of again.
We small soundmaking fools
Utter our deepest utterances
As if they were the stars-
But the stars the true stars
What Shakespeare wrote and knew
We cannot touch
Or come near
Not even in our greatest words unseen.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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