fandomhigh | Poetry 101, Monday, 7/30

Romeo gave the students a tired smile as they came in. He'd been dead the week before, which was frightening to think about but relatively easy to live through. As far as he could tell, he'd gone to bed the night of Sunday the 23rd and not woken up until the 30th.

But it was already clear to him that Yurika had not been so lucky.

"I understand," he said, taking his place in the circle of desks, "that the last week did not tread lightly on many of you. If its weight is such that you need to take this session and walk in the sun, or write in your journals, or anything, I've been here long enough that I'll not fault you for it."

"For the rest of us," he continued, "this week is about sonnets. A sonnet is a 14-line poem written in a highly stylized manner. In English tradition -- though of course there are other traditions -- they are written in ten-syllable lines of iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. And within the corset of that format, great beauty can unfold. Listen:

Fair is my love, when her fair golden hairs
With the loose wind ye waving chance to mark:
Fair, when the rose in her red cheeks appears,
Or in her eyes the fire of love does spark:
Fair, when her breast, like a rich laden bark
With precious merchandise she forth doth lay:
Fair, when that cloud of pride, which oft doth dark
Her goodly light, with smiles she drives away
But fairest she, when so she doth display
The gate with pearls and rubies richly dight,
Through which her words so wise do make their way,
To bear the message of her gentle sprite.
The rest be works of nature's wonderment,
But this the work of heart's astonishment.

"That's by Sir Edmund Spenser," he said, when he was done. "And your assignment for today is to write a sonnet of your own. Don't chain yourself too firmly to the rules, if they don't suit what you have to say."

Poetry 101, Monday, 7/30

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