#almost a sonnet

[env0writes]

Juniper Journal’s Vol. 2, 6.26.24 “Corporate Rungs"

@env0writes C.Buck   Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artists!   Photo by @env0

Scaffolding, hand-holding to the tower Struggling to maintain grip on the power Mesmerizing flame dances in a majestic arc As sunlight cresting over sorrow’s dark

Outsiders ascending, defending their home Thorns nestle sparrows, cloudy and gloam Reach as you may for the highest of reaches Carried on high by the loftiest speeches

March on and carry the weight of each stone Building and building another man’s throne

[winchester101]

He’s so endearing to me because he’s entirely doing all this song and dance for himself, they’re all ignoring him

Bonus Luffy drinking Sanjis tea

[britneyshakespeare]

I have to be so honest and vulnerable with you for a second. I keep thinking of getting another complete works of Shakespeare

[ninawolv3rina]

Real sad man hours

OC: Kennet (He/Him)

[breathingsong]

shakespeare seriously reigniting my passion for english lit

[loverofallthingssmart]

just wrote a sonnet. i now understand what shakespeare was on about

[ele0nline]

The Sonnet of the Farmer

In a distant land stands a man with a broken back and withered hands under a frozen sun  hung high above a field of corn. Built on stilts of severed bone and ashen snow, armed with an officer’s wit and a soldier's worn hoe, a sense of bliss now warms the calloused word of his command. A man. He is just a man a man with a farmer’s tan and back swathed in tattered cloth to hide scars of betrayal with pride. A simple man slaving beneath an icy sky. A farmer, keeping a traitorous heart in line.

I wrote this poem in, like, 2021 but never had a chance to post it anywhere. To the unknowing person, it's just a silly little poem about a retired soldier still haunted by war, but to the knowing person, it is more. :)

I wrote it about Technoblade when he was living in the arctic. This is an almost-sonnet about a Minecraft youtuber I'm such a fucking nerd

[crazyw3irdo]

been asked if i’ll make a hamlet version of my uquiz and truly like i get why you’d want me to do that but why would i do that when rosencrantz & guildenstern are dead exists

[env0writes]

Forever Breezy 2.14.23 "Love, But Not For You"

Beneath my surface skin lie constellations Yet you said you were afraid of the dark Only when I traced along my body every mark Paint by numbers was never my ballpark For you each brush stroke, poorly porcelained But to you I looked the child, with mothers paint Misbehaved and misadvised to do for me what’s plained A picture forms atop my surface, gleaning deeper faint Not all these freckles are feckless farmer’s tan stars Each story stabs and punctures messy-neat But never asked which one came from cars The painting canvas grows, and with it goes love incomplete I’ve dyed and died and lied and tried to share the stories lived But skin is deep enough for misfired love’s longing trajectory When the morning came up and out came bottled stories deprived Flushed with blushing worries only sunlight can see

@env0writes C.Buck Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artist!

[peapod20001]

Anyways I love reading and I love hearing people and I love learning and I love breaking down and discovering the meaning behind things. That’s why I’ve always said reading classes were one of my favorite classes. I love hearing instructors explain the meaning behind text

[eosofspades]

actually that's all i've got to say is so touchingly, devastatingly romantic and i can't believe i don't see people talking about it more

[youssefguedira]

is diabolik buying love poetry

[wellthatschaotic]

no one has them memorized

[ittybittybeastiebuddy]

WHATS YOUR FAVE POEM (S) :0

American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“I lock you in an American sonnet that is part prison”] never fails to tear my soul out along with my spinal chord, I've got a huge soft spot for sonnets in general but Terrance Hayes are a really fun exploration of how one can conform to the sonnet tradition while subverting it!

[dostoyevsky-official]

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

[...] Twenty years ago, Dames’s classes had no problem engaging in sophisticated discussions of Pride and Prejudice one week and Crime and Punishment the next. Now his students tell him up front that the reading load feels impossible. It’s not just the frenetic pace; they struggle to attend to small details while keeping track of the overall plot.

No comprehensive data exist on this trend, but the majority of the 33 professors I spoke with relayed similar experiences. Many had discussed the change at faculty meetings and in conversations with fellow instructors. [...] Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet.

Failing to complete a 14-line poem without succumbing to distraction suggests one familiar explanation for the decline in reading aptitude: smartphones. Teenagers are constantly tempted by their devices, which inhibits their preparation for the rigors of college coursework—then they get to college, and the distractions keep flowing. “It’s changed expectations about what’s worthy of attention,” Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at UVA, told me. “Being bored has become unnatural.” Reading books, even for pleasure, can’t compete with TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. In 1976, about 40 percent of high-school seniors said they had read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared with 11.5 percent who hadn’t read any. By 2022, those percentages had flipped.

[...] Mike Szkolka, a teacher and an administrator who has spent almost two decades in Boston and New York schools, told me that excerpts have replaced books across grade levels. “There’s no testing skill that can be related to … Can you sit down and read Tolstoy? ” he said. And if a skill is not easily measured, instructors and district leaders have little incentive to teach it. [...] The pandemic, which scrambled syllabi and moved coursework online, accelerated the shift away from teaching complete works.

[...] But it’s not clear that instructors can foster a love of reading by thinning out the syllabus. Some experts I spoke with attributed the decline of book reading to a shift in values rather than in skill sets. Students can still read books, they argue—they’re just choosing not to. Students today are far more concerned about their job prospects than they were in the past. Every year, they tell Howley that, despite enjoying what they learned in Lit Hum, they plan to instead get a degree in something more useful for their career.

[...] For years, Dames has asked his first-years about their favorite book. In the past, they cited books such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. Now, he says, almost half of them cite young-adult books. Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series seems to be a particular favorite.

[twistedtreeau]

Mr Phillip I must tell you that I am still not over "Shall I compare thee to a pile of leaves"

LMAO I was reading through Shakespeare's sonnets when I wrote that scene. It still makes me chuckle