#13-line sonnet

[motions1ckn3ss]

'I Cannot Heave My Heart Into My Mouth’: Shakespeare and Alice Winn’s In Memoriam

or, an academic blog post i wrote for an english literature assignment as part of my shakespeare module at uni. a huge thank you to @jovienna for proofreading and providing the most helpful suggestions, i'm very proud of this piece and i just got the mark back for it today and i received a 2:1! enjoy :)

‘But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, / Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure’ (Shakespeare 13-14): a declaration of queer love, not just in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, but also in Alice Winn’s debut novel In Memoriam, published in 2023. Throughout the novel, the character of Ellwood quotes various poems with famously homoerotic undertones as a way of professing his love for Gaunt, a fellow student at the boarding school they attend, in an era of repression and illegality concerning homosexuality. The works of Shakespeare become some of the most notable amongst this number.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20 depicts desire for a man that he cannot have. The love interest of the poem, being a man, must be for the pleasure of women only, as Nature has decided. As the closing lines express, all Shakespeare can offer the man is his own love. The meaning of these lines are certainly not lost on Ellwood, and to the regret of the poet-speaker who is resigned to Platonic love (Mahony 70), writes them ‘in pencil on the wall above Gaunt’s bed, and Gaunt had hoped they meant something.’ (Winn 42).

Despite this, Gaunt refuses to let himself believe this possibility, though Ellwood assumes that he simply does not reciprocate his feelings – ‘anyway, Gaunt already knew that Ellwood loved him. Because of the sonnets.’ (Winn 113). More than three hundred years after the publication of his sonnets, Shakespeare’s words connect with Ellwood and provide him with an outlet. Ellwood deliberately selects Sonnet 20 to ensure Gaunt knows of his love in a way that stops him ‘going completely mad and confessing wild, undying love for him, which he knew would have made Gaunt extremely uncomfortable.’ (Winn 113). Shakespeare puts pen to paper to write of his own unrequited love for another man, and Ellwood follows in his footsteps.

These closing lines of Sonnet 20 are not the only writings of Shakespeare referenced in In Memoriam, with King Lear arguably creating an even more heartfelt moment between the two men. The First World War, in all its tragedy, does bring Ellwood and Gaunt together, with the two only acting on their desires amidst the ‘hyper-masculine atmosphere of war’ (Winn 120). Following their honourable discharge from the army, the two move to Brazil together to live in relative safety. Ellwood suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and as a result of this no longer recites poems as he used to, unable to see the joy and meaning in doing so after seeing what one man can do to another in the name of war. Without his poetry as a means of expression, Ellwood struggles to express his emotions and the love he feels for Gaunt, leaving us with the heart-wrenching lines ‘some long-dead poet must have written the lines with which to answer, but Ellwood no longer knew them.’ (Winn 342).

And yet it is the words of Shakespeare, a long-dead poet, which Ellwood utilises to convey the sincerity and weight of his emotion to Gaunt when he feels a simple ‘I love you’ would not suffice. Frustrated with his own inability, Ellwood evokes the words of Cordelia, Lear’s daughter, so that Gaunt knows it is not a lack of love which prevents him from speaking.

‘Ellwood grimaced and shook his head, clearly frustrated. “No, Henry, I,” he said, “I – I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.” Gaunt stared at him. Ellwood looked just as shocked as he was. “Shakespeare,” said Ellwood. “King Lear.”’ (Winn 375)

‘Can it be that Cordelia’s emotion silences her at a moment when it is vital that she should speak?... Can it be that the quality and weight of her love drives her to understatement and to brusqueness?’ (Morris 141). Ivor Morris’s reasoning for Cordelia’s words ring true not just for the context of King Lear, but also for the final pages of In Memoriam. Much like Cordelia, it is not a lack of love which leaves Ellwood speechless, but an abundance of it. Throughout his adolescence, Ellwood finds solace and comfort in Shakespeare’s sonnets, quoting his words to convey his emotion when his own will not suffice. Following the tragedies the war has brought the pair and the world alike, Ellwood turns from these romantic poems to a tragic play in order to suitably express this shift in his feelings. Witnessing the horrors of war has changed him fundamentally as a person, and yet the works of Shakespeare, alongside his unwavering love for Gaunt, remain a constant in his life.

Works Cited

Mahony, Patrick. “Shakespeare’s Sonnet Number 20: Its Symbolic Gestalt.” American Imago, vol. 36, no. 1, 1979, pp. 69-79.

Morris, Ivor. “Cordelia and Lear.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2, 1957, pp. 141-158.

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 20: A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted.” The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint, Penguin Classics, 2009, p. 22.

Winn, Alice. In Memoriam. Penguin Books, 2023.

[isiaiowin]

GOetry - Let's Rondel

Welcome to GOetry! A weekly poetry club.

Every Monday, you'll receive a new poetry prompt and have until the following Monday to submit your poetic creations. Come join the fun! Post your finished work under the #GOetry and don't forget to tag me @isiaiowin so I can see your work.

You can also add your work to the AO3 collection here.

Thank you for joining in writing sonnets last week! The incredible work you produced was amazing to read. 

This week’s prompt:

Form: Rondel

Theme: Resist

A Rondel is a French form of poetry dating back to the 14th century. It consists of 13 lines arranged in three stanzas, typically two quatrains (four-line stanzas) followed by a quintet (five-line stanza), with repeated lines throughout the poem.

The rhyme scheme is: ABba / abAB / abbaA(B), where uppercase letters represent repeated lines.

A common variant, known as a Rondel Prime, adds a 14th line, turning the final quintet into a sestet.

If you'd like to write a Rondel Prime, simply add an extra line to the end!

Example: 

Reflecting by: Lawrencealot 

When desolation grabs your heart and forces tears

Let nature speak, reminding you not all is known.

When you, so young were taken to the funeral biers

my faith was shattered; all beliefs and hopes were thrown

away. I felt no comfort thinking heaven’s spheres

could somehow recompense for earthly love we’d grown.

When desolation grabs your heart and forces tears

Let nature speak reminding you not all is known.

I went to our lagoon, our waterfall appears

today to look like you, and hope renewed is sown

into my soul.  We lived and loved! This thought coheres.

That truly shines. Remember we are just on loan.

When desolation grabs your heart and forces tears

Let nature speak reminding you not all is known.

But most of all have fun! 💚 Moon

@goodomensafterdark

[forthlin]

7 + 13 + 22

👋 hey friend <3

7 post a snippet from a wip

okay this isn't exactly mclennon.. .. . it's from my lennison wip that's been weighing heavilyyy on my mind lately

"Don't y'have class right now?" George said.

"Is this me?" John asked.

The figure was scratched into the blank paper with a careful hand, John could tell, in the way that the penciled lines were almost trembling on the page in their short sweeps. There was a large platform — a stage, maybe — with a microphone stand, but the figure was sitting at the edge of it, legs dangling. John might not have figured it was him but the long sideboards and the jut of his nose gave it away enough, he thought, along with the curl of his quiff.

"Didn't know ye drew," said John, the only words that came to mind.

13 do you listen to music while you write? if yes, what have you been listening to recently?

YES!! i wish i could say i make playlists but i tend to choose 1-2 songs that i replay for literal hours until i'm done writing a scene/fic WHDHDH i listened to so in love by orchestral manoeuvres in the dark over a dozen times to finish up i need you, and i've currently been listening to waterloo sunset by the kinks & sonnet by the verve for another wip :)

22 do you title your fics before, during, or after the writing process? how do you come up with titles?

this is exposing me.. i almost always do it after, it's a last second thing for me. one of my fics was titled 'crazy blwjob fic' up until posting </3 i'll finish editing and go to post until i realize there's no title. then i run to spotify and hunt for an appropriate lyric to slap on as a title and ta da!! genius i am

fic writing ask meme

[eliotquillon]

BOOKS: 16, 3, 5

16. What is the most overhyped book you read this year?

nobody get mad at me. but buddha of suburbia by hanif kureishi. don’t get me wrong i LIKED this book!!! i love edgy literary fiction (coming out as a moshfegh enjoyer) and i love gross borderline TMI details and i love a messy protagonist and i love a clean writing style. this ticked all of those boxes and it’s a good coming of age story and i get why it was and still is popular. but did it blow me away? no. the edition i read had a foreword by zadie smith that basically acted as if it was god’s gift to literary fiction and idk maybe that skewed my expectations but it just wasn’t! a solid 4 star train read but it did not change my life and i was kind of expecting it to (especially because kureishi wrote the screenplay for my beautiful laundrette which is one of my favourite films EVER).

3. What were your top 5 books of the year?

AGHH this is tricky.

maybe this is cheating because i had to read it for my dissertation but a single man by christopher isherwood had me crying in public. again, more literary fiction, and as with most of isherwood’s work it hasn’t exactly aged gracefully in places, but it is just so…raw. i can take or leave isherwood’s attempts at humour but what he IS very very good at is portraying grief, especially in the stream of consciousness format. even when it isn’t the explicit focus of a passage or a chapter it’s always in the room and it just absolutely gutted me. honestly this book had the effect on me that everyone said i was supposed to get from mrs dalloway. i don’t think isherwood is a better writer than woolf overall but IN THIS ONE RESPECT…isherwood wins.

this one is top 5 not in terms of quality but in terms of ‘made my inner 13 year old very happy’: the sunshine court by nora sakavic. look okay when i was 13 i read the all for the game trilogy for the first time and it changed my brain chemistry forever. i may be an adult with an english degree now but when i found out there was gonna be a spin-off sequel you bet your ass i dropped everything i was doing to devour this book in one day. i would like everyone here to know that i was on the jeremy/jean ship train years before it was cool and i have the jerejean fanfic with thousands of kudos that was written and posted in 2017 to PROVE IT. i don’t have anything coherent to say about this book other than ‘objectively it was badly written but subjectively i had to lie down on the floor for several hours after reading it’ and that’s my truth. i would not wish this book series on my worst enemy. but nevertheless.

i also really liked manhunt by gretchen felker-martin. i’m not usually a horror/zombie apocalypse person BUT this is a very different take on it—i think i will do a very bad job of describing it so please look it up, it’s an ownvoices novel written by a trans woman. i was not a super big fan of the ending but everything up until that was very, very good—i normally hate gore but the body horror descriptions were super compelling and i think the plot works really really well as an allegory for transmisogyny.

rounding out the list: this year i finally got around to reading maus by art spiegelman and yeah. it just really is that good. by far the best graphic novel i have ever read and honestly the best non-fiction book i’ve read in a while. and finally: american sonnets for my past and future assassin by terrance hayes!! i was set sonnet from hip logic for a supervision essay (all fourteen lines are ‘we sliced the watermelon into smiles’) and it got me a) very into sonnets and b) very into hayes’ work in general. highly highly recommend. i am not a ‘poetry person’ for the most part (bold take for an english major, i know) but this collection slaps. really made me rethink everything i knew about poetry.

5. What genre did you read the most of?

yeah there is a clear winner here and for better or for worse it Is literary fiction. i did not used to be a lit fiction person at all and then the summer before i turned 19 i got really annoying and really into ottessa moshfegh and now look at me . specifically i read a lot of modernism this year because my dissertation supervisor specialises in it and i am, once again, writing an isherwood diss lmao. and i also read a hell of a lot of short stories if we’re counting those as a separate subgenre (which i don’t, i class it as a form, but i know some people do). my teenage self would be so disappointed in me. i do have such a soft spot for genre fiction, specifically fantasy, and i DO still read a lot of it but i just lean more towards literary fiction now and that’s okay!!!

[eilinelsghost]

Ten first lines

from my last 10 fics. Thanks to @welcomingdisaster and @thelordofgifs for the tags!

Arafinwë knew the path without thought. He had long ceased numbering these pilgrimages to the silent groves and his feet could find the way of their own volition. In Memory Beside You, a bday ficlet for @actual-bill-potts, Rating: G

The laugh rumbled through Finarfin’s bones. Fight With Thine Own Hand, a bday fic for @that-angry-noldo, Rating: T

Finrod’s dive cut through the surface, hardly leaving a splash as he slipped beneath Ivrin’s mere. In These Holy Waters, part 14 of Atandil, Rating: T

“Nay nay, not in a mad rush. A heartbeat, Balan, not a woodpecker.” A Harmony Refracted, Rating: E (aslkdjflaksdj out of context, this opening line is uh...)

Once again, Finrod caught sight of him through the trees. And Still the Light Returns, part 13 of Atandil, Rating: T

I rise. Alone upon the crested brine / I hover, poised against the dark and deep / of Ossë’s maw, here opened wide, and steep / the plummet. A Bitter Wine, sonnet for a TRSB treat, Eärendil/Elwing, Rating: G

Anárion grew tired of pacing. Atanatárissë, for TRSB 2024, Rating: T

He looked a small, frail figure outlined beside the white crags of the shoreline. Little Lords of the Brine, Finrod & Orodreth reembodied, Rating: G

It was raining when they crossed the Narog. Children of the Sun, part 12 of Atandil, Rating: T

He had arrived with the dark, slipping through the doorway with the night breeze and the scent of heather blossoms, carried with him from the hills. All in Patience, All in Haste, Aegnor/Andreth, Rating: G

------

Tagging with zero pressure: @that-angry-noldo, @searchingforserendipity25, @actual-bill-potts, @sallysavestheday

[cosmosgroundhogday]

Noel's Lament, a ballad?? Less likely than you think

I'm back on my bullshit so let's go.

So, we all know about how Noel's Lament isn't actually a lament and is in fact a ballad, and that Ballad of Jane Doe isn't a ballad and is in fact a lament. All this is because lament's are used for mourning and Noel is mourning his could've-been slutty French life, and ballad's are for telling a story and Jane just wants a story of her own she can tell.

We all know that, that's old news. But what if I were to tell you that Noel's Lament isn't entirely a ballad? We'd expect Noel to perform an untraditional ballad that maybe doesn't follow all of the conventions of an actual ballad as an amab who wants to be an afab sex worker in France, but it goes further than that.

A ballad is a poem that contains 12 stanzas, each with 4 lines that follows either an ABAB or ABCB rhyme scheme. An ABAB rhyme scheme is used to tell a love story, and an ABCB rhyme scheme is used to tell a story of heartbreak, or domestic crimes, or political propaganda, or loss of faith in religion etc etc. Noel's Lament follows an ABCB rhyme scheme, due to it's negative tone associating with heartbreak and unfaithfulness and whatever else is going on in Noel's fantasy world.

However, Noel's Lament contains 13 stanzas. Now you might be thinking: hang on, but the very last stanza is 2 lines, that barely even counts. If you're going to exclude the 5th line of some verses "I want to be that fucked up girl" from the ballad then you can exclude those two too! Well I would, except stanzas 11 and 12 also don't follow the rules of a ballad. They're each 6 lines long, and follow an AABBCC rhyme scheme. So when you split stanzas 1-10 and stanzas 11-13 separately, you get a 10 line long ballad, followed by a sonnet. A sonnet is 14 lines and often follows an AABB rhyme scheme, and I'd say Noel's AABBCC rhyme scheme is close enough to say it's the same thing.

See where I'm going with this? If Noel's song is a short ballad followed by a sonnet, whatever could that mean? Well as we know, a ballad is used to tell a story. If that story is cut short, whatever could that symbolise? Noel's tragically early death :). But then why does he sing a sonnet? Well sonnet's are used to write about desire, and even though his entire song is about the desire to be a French sex worker, this desire can also relate to the desire to live again :).

Summary: Noel sings a ballad that's suddenly cut short to symbolise how suddenly his life was cut short, and ends his song with a sonnet to symbolise his desire to live again :D

Thank you for putting up with my English Literature brain who over-analysed the structure of a silly little musical song :D

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald Newsletter, Saturday, July 13

ANYA: How can I help? WILLOW: Uh, distract him from Buffy. Uh, piss him off. ANYA: I don't know how. WILLOW: Anya, I have faith in you. There is no one you cannot piss off.

~~BtVS 5x11 “Triangle”~~

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

On Injuries (Buffy,Willow, G) by number1sillyguy

sonnet 18 (Giles/Jenny, not rated) by americanpie

Even Sunnydale Wasn't This Strange (Buffy, Howard the Duck xover, G) by Fablemaker

[Chaptered Fiction]

What Happens In Quarantine..., Chapter 22/24 (Buffy/Spike, E) by bewildered

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Shadowed Suspicion Volume X, Chapter 26/27 (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure xover, T) by arcanedreamer

Aegis, Chapter 9/? (Xander, DCU xover, T) by dogbertcarroll, Narsil

Bloody Hell: A Hellmouthian Dissertation, Chapter 10/? (Buffy/Giles, The Big Bang Theory xover, M) by HuonParticlesAreHarmless

Harry's Next Great Adventure in Sunnydale, Chapter 15/? (Willow/Harry Potter, Buffy/Dawn, HP xover, M) by Khatix

Highlands and Tropical Islands, Chapter 13/14 (Buffy/Faith, M) by QuillBard

Home Movies, Chapter 5/25 (Buffy/Spike, E) by cawthraven

Blue Recall, Chapter 2 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by VoronaFiernan, hydranjenna

Tale as Old as Time, Chapter 5 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by honeygirl51885

School of Hard Knocks, Chapter 7 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by Melme1325

Spiked, Chapter 8 (Buffy/Spike, Adult Only) by Maxine Eden

Forgiveness Doesn't Come Easy, Chapter 34 (Buffy/Spike, R) by slaymesoftly

Love Lives Here, Chapter 86 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by Passion4Spike

Some You Lose, Chapter 18 (Buffy, Stargate xover, FR13) by lyapunov

I Do!, Chapter 32 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by Dusty

Tale as Old as Time, Chapter 5 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by honeygirl51885

Forgiveness Doesn't Come Easy, Chapter 34 (Buffy/Spike, R) by slaymesoftly

Love Lives Here, Chapter 86 (Buffy/Spike, NC-17) by Passion4Spike

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork: Making It Right (Spike/Drusilla, worksafe) by revello-drive-1630

Artwork: [Drawing of Buffy and Spike] (worksafe) by isevery0nehereverystoned

[Reviews & Recaps]

collected thoughts from The Freshman/Living Conditions by edgarallanhoetry

Stake fodder's rewatch: S1.8 I Robot, You Jane continued by Stake fodder

PODCAST: Later Farm...boy (S4E14) by It Stakes Two

[Recs & In Search Of]

Many Waters by JaneDavitt recced by old-fic-recs

[Fandom Discussions]

I cannot believe they made a worse decision with Cordy’s love life than Angel. by chungledown-bimothy

think i’ve said it before, but so not chill how buffy acted about faith killing someone by accident while slaying by ageingpopulation

i love spike’s ‘you glow’ line but for me it is overshadowed by the absolute gut punch that is 'it’s nice to watch you be happy. for them, even.’ by louisandjade

obviously the every night I save you speech is one of my most absolute favourite monologues ever and I have tears in my eyes every time by youhavethesun

I wanted to get back into Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and I figured I should give the comics a go. by darewitchstr

Faith has 6 episodes on ATS. but she only has 1 scene with Lorne, in S4, where she is lying in bed. [...] we were robbed of a Faith - Lorne scene! by juanabaloo

rewatching some early s3 Buffy for the first time in way too long and Buffy x Willow isn’t one of my top ships by morocorra

if i made a fuffy playlist it would be exclusively songs they might dance to at the bronze by lesbianmarrow

Fun Facts by MoonLight SY-3, multiple posters

What are things character don't get enough credit for? by The Whirlwind

What's your favorite season? by The Whirlwind

What do you think Wesley told the others when he went to get Faith? by Other_Thing_2551

What episode do you think was the hardest concept to execute? by Ok_Area9367

What kind of slow music do you think Faith would like? by Beached-Peach

What age were you when you started perceiving Giles as less professional elder, more handsome peer? by KlsYo7

What are people’s favorite songs from the buffy soundtrack? by emerald-skyes

Angel as covert narcissist vs Spike and Buffy as codependent by AccordingReference3

[Articles, Interviews, and Other News]

PUBLICATION: James Marsters GalaxyCon Raleigh 2024 Schedule by James Marsters News

Submit a link to be included in the newsletter!

Join the editor team :)

[foxes-that-run]

You have said before that loml has 3 muses, but what if it's just HS? She heard love of my life on Harry's house and they reconnected, and whatever went down after that is basically loml? The lyrics don't make full sense with what we know about HS because we don't know this part of the story or whatever happened. Also, I think the secret of us. also has something to do with this timeline...particularly that line about ' that night you were talking of false prophets and profits they make in the margins of poetry sonnets'. It is such an odd line. Whatever it was that got in the way this time was business / career related.

Maybe something I reblogged, my post about it is here. I've always thought it was only about Harry. Mostly because it refers to several of his songs by title or lyrics (the title of Love of My Life, Steal My Girl, lyrics of Stockholm Syndrome, Two Ghosts and a quote of OW during the period the song was written).

I think Taylor usually writes to one person in a song. I think some of her songs started about one person and ended about another, but not loml. I do think the album/prolouge has three (main) muses:

[justforbooks]

Alan Brownjohn, who has died aged 92, was a prolific and seemingly indefatigable poet and novelist. Although best known as a poet, a recipient of the Cholmondeley award in 1979, Brownjohn also wrote well-received novels – winning the Author’s Club prize for his first, The Way You Tell Them (1990), a satire set in the world of standup comedy – and two children’s books, collaborated on plays, and worked as a freelance writer and critic.

He was poetry editor for the New Statesman from 1968 until 1974, and later poetry critic of the Sunday Times for more than 20 years. He was also a diligent campaigner on behalf of poetry.

Brownjohn was chairman of the Poetry Society (1982-88) and worked on the Arts Council literature panel, drawing on a prior experience of, and appetite for, public service, first demonstrated when he and his first wife, the poet Shirley Toulson, were elected Labour councillors in Wandsworth, south-west London, in the 1960s.

In a long writing career Brownjohn was something of a rarity, arguably producing his very best work when already well into his 70s. Among an array of well-observed, various and spry collections, Ludbrooke & Others (2010) stands out as perhaps most successfully representing his blend of emotionally astute, rigorously downbeat and wittily rendered character dissection.

Written in 13-line “sonnets for the unlucky”, in the poet Peter Reading’s phrase, the suite of 60 poems shows the titular Ludbrooke’s self-defeating attempts at seduction, titivation and a resentful brand of empathy, pitched somewhere between the metropolitan tone of the Robinson poems of Weldon Kees and John Berryman’s courtly, chaotic Dream Songs.

For all their possible influence from those two North American poets, Ludbrooke is a singularly English concoction: raffish and highly attuned to divisions of class and gentlemanly behaviour. The sequence of Ludbrooke poems speak to many of Brownjohn’s own concerns and foibles but ratcheted up for – at times poignant – laughter and a kind of wounded recognition.

The roots of Ludbrooke can be found in some of Brownjohn’s previous work, especially a proto-Ludbrooke known as “the Old Fox”, who first appeared in poems decades earlier, albeit with a cannier, more malicious edge.

Brownjohn’s early poetic life was inextricably bound up with the Group, a long-running workshop run by the poet and teacher Philip Hobsbaum, which fellow poets, such as the stylistically diverse Peter Redgrove and Peter Porter, would attend to discuss and dissect each others’ new work.

They were chiefly guided by a spirit of close reading, based on the “new criticism” of Hobsbaum’s Cambridge tutor FR Leavis. The Group had as its guiding principles “rationalism, democracy and humanity”; during Brownjohn’s time as a member, his work was most visibly influenced by the Movement, another loose grouping of associated poets, including Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, who came to be the dominating force in mainstream British poetry in the 50s.

Larkin would remain an enduring influence for Brownjohn, who later published a critical study of the Hull poet in 1975, as well as learning plenty about form, reticence and the sometimes inadvertent comedy to be found in attempts at navigating life in modern, secular, middle-class Britain.

Brownjohn was born in Catford, south-east London, the son of Dorothy (nee Mulligan) and Charles Brownjohn, and was educated at Brockley county school and Merton College, Oxford, where he studied history. Much of his working life was spent in education, as an assistant master at Beckenham and Penge boys’ grammar school from 1958 to 1965; a lecturer at Battersea College of Education (now London South Bank University); and a lecturer in poetry, and later in creative writing, at the Polytechnic of North London (now London Metropolitan University). His experiences as a teacher fed into his poems, sometimes directly as subject material.

He also demonstrated an interest in leftwing politics, and was actively involved in the Labour party. He was elected to Wandsworth Metropolitan borough council in 1962 and stood as Labour candidate for Richmond in the 1964 general election, but did not win the seat.

Brownjohn, in his early years, and bearing the trace of the Movement’s ordinary-blokeish sensibility, wrote poems out of seemingly mundane everyday life, usually in well-organised stanzas, regularly using rhyme and a colloquial, downbeat diction. His poems were, however, more interested – even from the start – than those of the Movement in leftwing ideals and shot through by a sense of the importance of doing one’s social duty.

As Sean O’Brien pointed out: “Like Larkin, he has spent much of his career pondering the contradictions between desire and obligation.”

He could also be formally innovative, playing with reported speech, song and ballad forms and more postmodern techniques such as footnotes and other forms of self-aware commentary. He had an astute eye trained on working life, the eco-systems of the office, particularly well rendered in one of his outstanding poems of the 60s, Office Party, in which “the girl with the squeaker / Came passing” and the cruelly ignored narrator ends on a note of wry despair: “I’d never so craved for / Some crude disrespect.”

Brownjohn proved adept at writing narrative sequences long before Ludbrooke’s travails, with other highlights including The Automatic Days, from The Observation Car (1990), in which the power struggles and jostling for a fair shake by the staff at a department store take centre-stage, and Sea Pictures from the same volume, its 40 snapshot-style lyrics building an atmospheric, sepia-tinted look at memory and escape.

Brownjohn’s life was, in many ways, an exemplary version of the contemporary person of letters – a dutiful committee-man and champion of other writers, looking towards Europe and the wider literary world for inspiration and to shine a light on neglected figures, as well as ranging across various art-forms for material. He also wrote obituaries for the Guardian.

When asked to name his favourite poetry quotes to accompany a recording made for the Poetry Archive, Brownjohn noted that (leaning on Matthew Arnold) “the poetry comes first”. For Brownjohn, despite his many other enthusiastically undertaken obligations and diligent acts of service, poetry was – and remained – the heart of it all, as a way of scrutinising and documenting postwar Britain as well as his own intellectual and emotional life.

He and Toulson, with whom he had a son, Steven, divorced in 1969. In 1972 Brownjohn married Sandra Willingham; they separated in 2005.

He is survived by Steven, and by two stepchildren, Ian and Janet, from his first marriage.

🔔 Alan Charles Brownjohn, poet, novelist and critic, born 28 July 1931; died 23 February 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[milo-the-crotonian]

Sonnet 13: Extraterrestrial Love Letters Via Radiowaves

M: "There in the slumber-sent realms I caught you!"

F: "How so, was I falling into a star?"

M: "No, you fell with no directions and bounds,

Pulled to the brighter lights of a quasar!"

F: "That's odd you feel there's no borders to space,

As the light years are chained to cosmic time—

How can distance obscure our perceptions?"

M: "That's 'cause it does not work as a straight line."

F: 'Suppose there's cataclysms unheard,

The ones you prattle about all the time,

That boom and thrust out the strange and absurd,

But you hold to strings of bursted grapevines?"

M: "My notions be absurd as there's no sound

That cannot capture the tones of affection."

[petrichor-moss-and-lightning]

Hi! Do you like poetry? Have a heartfelt and/or wrathful proclamation that can only be delivered in the form of prose?? Have you considered…

Commissioning a poem!?

That’s right, folx! With decade(s) of experience and a buttload of trauma, yours truly will write a customized poem for you, a loved one, or even your worst enemy!

What I do:

My specialty: poetry about love, yearning, mental health, environmental issues, and human rights.

Nature poetry, joke poetry, haikus, sonnets, etc. (Idk, pretty much any genre or format you want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

What I don’t do:

Anything nsfw (I keep things PG-13 as a result of where I land on the ace spectrum lol)

Anything bigoted/hateful (no racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, fatphobia, etc.)

Anything I’m uncomfortable with (but feel free to ask if you're unsure!!)

IMPORTANT NOTES

I only accept payment through PayPal at the moment (sorry!!)

I still retain the rights to my writing, even after I've sent the commissioned piece (so please credit me if you choose to post/share it).

Pricing + examples:

OPTION ONE Up to 8 lines, but I'm willing to be flexible with this if the situation calls for it (e.g., if I'm in the middle of writing and I feel the poem would be benefited by a couple extra lines). $7 CAD

OPTION TWO Up to 16 lines, but again I'm willing to be flexible about the line limit under the right circumstances. $14 CAD

OPTION 3 Up to 35 lines -- less flexibility with this one, since it's a pretty big project (the below example is a little longer, but with standard line breaks, it would be within the limit) $28 CAD

If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! <3 If you're interested in commissioning poetry from me, my DMs are open!

[lenbryant]

LONG POST - Cancel Shakespeare? No way!

(NYTimes) Make Shakespeare Dirty Again

Aug. 13, 2023, By Drew Lichtenberg

It seemed, for a moment, that Shakespeare was being canceled. Last week, school district officials in Hillsborough County, Fla., said that they were preparing high school lessons for the new academic year with some of William Shakespeare’s works taught only with excerpts, partly in keeping with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s legislation about what students can or can’t be exposed to.

I’m here to say: Good. Cancel Shakespeare. It’s about time.

Anyone who spends a lot of time reading Shakespeare (or working on his plays, as I have for most of my professional career) understands that he couldn’t have been less interested in puritanical notions of respectability. Given how he’s become an exalted landmark on the high road of culture, it’s easy to forget that there’s always been a secret smugglers’ path to a more salacious and subversive Shakespeare, one well known and beloved by artists and theater people. The Bard has long been a patron saint to rebel poets and social outcasts, queer nonconformists and punk provocateurs.

Yes, Shakespeare is ribald, salacious, even shocking. But to understand his genius — and his indelible legacy on literature — students need to be exposed to the whole of his work, even, perhaps especially, the naughty bits.

The closing lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 20, addressed to the poem’s male subject, are among the dirtiest — and hottest — of the 16th century. “But since she pricked thee out for women’s pleasure, / Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.” A favorite trick of Shakespeare’s was to play with word order, especially when he wanted to disclose something too daring to be said in a more straightforward way, such as the love that dared not speak its name. The untangled meaning here: Your love ultimately belongs to me, sir, even if women (sometimes) enjoy your prick. Or, from the neck up you are as beautiful as a woman, and from the waist down you are all man.

Sex is one thing. The plays are also astoundingly gory. The bloody climax of “King Lear” so horrified the playwright Nahum Tate that he felt compelled to rewrite its ending. Tate’s sanitized version of “King Lear,” premiering in 1681, held the stage until 1838. In the 18th century, Voltaire called “Hamlet” the apparent product of a “drunken savage” who wrote without “the slightest spark of good taste”— which didn’t stop Voltaire, who also recognized Shakespeare’s “genius,” from openly borrowing from the Bard for one of his own plays.

In 1872 in “The Birth of Tragedy,” Friedrich Nietzsche praised this savagery. To him, Shakespeare contained the ne plus ultra of grisly truths. Hamlet, he wrote, “sees everywhere only the horror or absurdity of existence.” Nietzsche being Nietzsche, he considered this a good thing. Art, wrote Nietzsche, transforms “these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.”

In light of Nietzsche’s counterintuitive epiphany, the notion of Shakespeare-the-hipster caught fire. Hamlet, uniquely among male roles in the classical canon, became an aspirational part for female theatrical stars looking to prove their bona fides and upend gender preconceptions: Sarah Bernhardt most famously, but also the great Danish actor Asta Nielsen. Shakespeare’s sonnets were a source of succor to decadent aesthetes such as Oscar Wilde, just as they had been to Charles Baudelaire. The writings and teachings of queer poets such as W.H. Auden and Allen Ginsberg suggests they saw themselves in Shakespeare’s works, as did anti-racist writers from James Baldwin to Lorraine Hansberry and Ann Petry.

Where the avant-garde led, pop culture followed. Shakespeare’s plays have always lent themselves to all manner of interpretations and they found new life in the postwar era, with landmark works like Basil Dearden’s “All Night Long,” a neo-noir film from 1962, which set “Othello” in a British jazz soiree. Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968 plugged into a different cultural zeitgeist, capturing onscreen the summer of love, while Roman Polanski’s film version of “Macbeth” in 1971 feels like an encomium for the dying utopian dreams of the ’60s.

In the transgressive ’90s, Shakespeare was everywhere: taboo, art house, alternative and cool. Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho” reimagined Prince Hal and Hotspur as gay grunge gods and Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” featured Leonardo DiCaprio at the peak of his androgyne allure. Even “Shakespeare in Love,” a relatively middlebrow Oscar winner, presented a vision of the brooding, bearded, sexy Shakespeare, as embodied by Joseph Fiennes.

In many other cultures, the bawdy lowbrow and the poetic highbrow are often personified by separate champions: In France, it’s Rabelais and Racine; in Spain, Cervantes and Calderón. In English literature Shakespeare has always combined both brows into something rich, special and strange. In “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” one of Shakespeare’s most magical and sensual plays, Bottom — a man with the head of a donkey — spends the night in bed next to the fairy queen. He wakes up having had something close to a religious experience. Every play in the canon features something similarly subversive and transcendent — and all of them are essential.

One can no more take out the dirty parts of Shakespeare than one can take out the poetry. It’s all intertwined, so that Shakespeare seems almost purposefully designed to confound those who want to segregate the smutty from the sublime. His work is proof that profundity can live next to, and even be found in, the pornographic, the viscerally violent and the existentially horrifying. So if you’re looking for sex, gore and the unspeakable absurdity of existence in Shakespeare, you will definitely find it. That’s the genius of Shakespeare. And it’s precisely what makes his work worth studying.

Drew Lichtenberg is a lecturer at Yale University and the resident dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, D.C.

[midautumnnight]

Perception of Shakespeare

In today's culture, Shakespeare is known as one of the greatest authors in history. During his lifespan, however, there was much controversy on his public appeal. Within Robert Greene's From Groatsworth of Wit in 1592, the negative connotation of Shakespeare is publicized. By referencing Shakespeare's previous career as an actor, the author is skeptic on his credibility and academics. Scholars have very limited knowledge on Shakespeare's background, so as a result examine pieces such as these. In my onion, it appears that Greene, similar to the color of his name, is envious of Shakespeare's abilities.

In spite of what Greene thought of Shakespeare, by the time his passing came, Shakespeare was still considered filled with wealth. In compilation with his scrutiny from society, we as an audience can take what Shakespeare has said in his sonnets to reflect off of his life. Notably, in Sonnet 111, Shakespeare reflects off of his fame and the consequences that have come of it.

He writes:

O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 

The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 

That did not better for my life provide 

Than public means which public manners breeds. (lines 1-4)

He additionally writes:

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye 

Even that your pity is enough to cure me. (lines 13-14)

From these passages, the reader is able to gather that although Shakespeare is a sensation, he struggles with the inner workings of his own identity. Similar to pop culture today, Shakespeare was certainly scrutinized and suffered with a sense of self.

SONG OF THE DAY: In comparison to a modern day example, Taylor Swift's "mirrorball" reflects off of constantly putting on a show for an audience.

[seventhsimp]

Priamhark & Plelleamena, carrying the Anastasian line at any cost

-Shakespeare sonnet 13

[sliderulermind]

Brother this continues to be the most braindead "curtains are blue" fucking take this terrible website has to offer.

NO. Sorry you had an English teacher who didn't know how to teach this show. Sorry you were introduced to R&J culturally by people calling it the greatest love story of all time. But you're missing the fucking POINT and for people who actually have read the show and enjoy the show and study Shakespeare this makes me insane.

The SHOW is not a love story, yes. But the show also doesn't claim to be. They state right in the beginning monologue that the show is about two houses who have fought for so long that they don't remember what the feud is even about. Romeo and Juliet is about two children who find innocent and harmless love and how good things will be stomped out by adult stubbornness and refusal to change out of pride.

At the end of the day, those kids were in love. Shakespeare tells you in the way he writes-- when R&J meet, their words form a sonnet together, Shakespeare's main form of love poetry. And every time somebody says "oh, they were just stupid kids who got people hurt" I want to shake them and ask HOW DO YOU NOT REALIZE YOU ARE THE VILLAIN. In this show, the parents feel the exact same way you do. Just a couple of dumb fucking kids who don't know what they're talking about. BUT if they had been allowed to be dumb kids, nobody would have died at all. They would've had 7 kids and died at 30 or hated each other in a week, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that there was no reason to keep them from trying other than the smug adult view that kids are just idiots, that we MUST know more than children, and thus are within our rights to deny them autonomy. A 13 year old girl truly thinks faking her own death (with a high chance of REALLY DYING) is a better option than being forced into marriage, and y'all are somehow on the side of the parents?

YOU are the villain in the story. Get some fucking reading comprehension and realize the superiority you're claiming is literally the exact thing Shakespeare is railing against in every line.

[poemshubs]

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 13: An In-Depth Analysis

William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 13 is a profound meditation on the passage of time and the impermanence of beauty. As one of the 154 sonnets written by the poet, this sonnet delves deeply into the themes of age, youth, and the natural world, employing rich metaphorical language to urge the reader to appreciate beauty in the moment. In this essay, we will explore the sonnet’s structure, themes, and literary devices in order to gain a clear understanding of Shakespeare’s exploration of time and beauty.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 13

O, that you were your self! But, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live; Against this coming end you should prepare, And your sweet semblance to some other give. So should that beauty which you hold in lease Find no determination; then you were Your self again after yourself’s decease When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, Which husbandry in honor might uphold Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day And barren rage of death’s eternal cold? O, none but unthrifts, dear my love, you know. You had a father; let your son say so.

The Structure of the Sonnet

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 13 follows the typical structure of a Shakespearean sonnet: it consists of 14 lines, divided into three quatrains and a final rhymed couplet. The rhyme scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, which is characteristic of the Shakespearean sonnet form. The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, which means each line has ten syllables, with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. This rhythmic structure mirrors the natural flow of speech, lending a musical quality to the poem, which enhances its emotional resonance.

The Central Theme: Beauty and Time

At the heart of Sonnet 13 is a reflection on the transience of physical beauty and the inevitability of aging. The speaker urges the young man to recognize the fleeting nature of his youth and beauty and to consider the potential consequences of neglecting to preserve his image in art. Shakespeare’s use of nature imagery and the passage of time becomes a powerful vehicle through which he emphasizes the inexorable decay of beauty.

The opening lines of the sonnet set the tone for this reflection:

“O, that you were yourself! But, love, you are No longer yours than you yourself here live.” (Lines 1–2)

Here, the speaker expresses a longing for the young man to possess a permanence of beauty, lamenting that his youthful appearance will inevitably fade. The repetition of “you” emphasizes the subject’s transience: he belongs to the natural world, where all things change, but the speaker seems to suggest that there is a possibility of holding onto youth through art.

The Role of Art as a Means of Immortality

Shakespeare uses the sonnet to argue that art, particularly poetry, can immortalize the beauty that time would otherwise destroy. He encourages the youth to preserve his image in poetry so that his beauty may be preserved for posterity:

“Make thee another self for love of me, That beauty still may live in thine or thee.” (Lines 9–10)

In these lines, the speaker suggests that the young man should reproduce himself through art—perhaps through a portrait or a poem. This act of reproduction is not just a literal one, but a symbolic gesture, as the beauty captured in art is preserved for eternity, transcending the ravages of time. By encouraging the youth to create “another self,” Shakespeare invokes the idea that beauty is not confined to the body but can be immortalized in language.

The Imagery of Nature and Time

Shakespeare’s use of nature imagery throughout the sonnet reinforces the idea of time’s relentless march. In the third quatrain, the speaker compares the youth’s beauty to a flower, which inevitably fades with time:

“When you are old and withered, pale and die, These youthful treasures will be still so fair.” (Lines 11–12)

The “youthful treasures” in this line refer to the young man’s physical beauty, which, like the flower, will fade and die. However, Shakespeare also presents the possibility that, through art, these treasures may endure. This juxtaposition between the impermanence of natural beauty and the permanence of artistic expression reinforces the central theme of the sonnet.

The Closing Couplet

The final couplet of the sonnet offers a resolution to the speaker’s musings:

“Then let not winter’s ragged hand deface In thee thy summer, ere thou be distill’d.” (Lines 13–14)

Here, Shakespeare uses the metaphor of winter to represent old age, contrasting it with the “summer” of youth. The speaker advises the young man not to let the harshness of time “deface” his beauty before it has been captured and preserved. This is a call to act in the present—to ensure that beauty does not fade before it is immortalized.

Conclusion

In Sonnet 13, Shakespeare masterfully engages with the themes of beauty, time, and art. Through his vivid imagery and careful structuring, he presents a timeless message: physical beauty is transient, but through art, particularly poetry, beauty can achieve immortality. The speaker’s plea to the young man to preserve his image in art can be seen as Shakespeare’s own assertion of the power of poetry to capture and preserve the fleeting moments of life. As such, this sonnet not only reflects on the fragility of youth but also celebrates the enduring power of language and the artist’s role in transcending time.