Your assignments

[tugger]

Well, Teach, I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the sonnets. If you had to pick a favorite, which would it be and why? What images hit home with you?

 

[warm_enema]

Hmm, you're a tough nut to crack. What is missing in your life?

But the question remains, what type of nut am I. What is missing from my life...me.

 

[Ashlea]

But the question remains, what type of nut am I. What is missing from my life...me.

Hmm. You've read Hamlet, haven't you? (Though I try not to assign Shakespeare this early in the class.)

 

[Ashlea]

Well, Teach, I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on the sonnets. If you had to pick a favorite, which would it be and why? What images hit home with you?

I really like the one you mentioned earlier:

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby !
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.


It's a lot to ask, though, a sort of love that only a knight would feel for his chosen lady, to love for love only. On one hand, people change and love has to change with them or die, but on the other, it seems an impersonal love that doesn't depend on the details. Without passion. I would prefer a love that loves you for your virtues and your faults, and grows and changes as you change.

The concept brings to mind this bit of Shakespeare:

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.

This sort of love seems a bit vague to me, as well.

In general, I think Shakespeare's sonnets are a bit too obtuse for me. I keep trying though, and occasionally find one that speaks to me.

 

[Ashlea]

From the one I quoted in full earlier:

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I really like this thought. Love is, after all, something you live with all the time.

and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

I find this idea thought-provoking. Does love survive death?

 

[warm_enema]

Hmm. You've read Hamlet, haven't you? (Though I try not to assign Shakespeare this early in the class.)

Yes, I have. Shakespeare is pretty dull. I prefer the Ban Plays.

I'm reading Don Quixote at present. I can't find a publication date for Romeo and Juliet. At anyrate, in D.Q. there is a scene that is a mirror image of the balcony scene in R and J. Which leads me to believe that it was common occurance at the time and The Bard, is an over-hyped, melodramatic, queen. End of rant.

 

[tugger]

In general, I think Shakespeare's sonnets are a bit too obtuse for me. I keep trying though, and occasionally find one that speaks to me.

I agree. Of the two sonnets you compared, I tend to like the EBB better. But as for the two types of love. The love of passion that is subject to influence and change or the more permanent love for love's sake, perhaps the ideal is the first slowly evolving into the latter.

As for love surviving death. Of course know one knows for sure. We all can choose what we wish to believe. Speaking as the romantic who believes in love and all it's magic, I prefer to think that it does.

 

[tugger]

I'll just assume this was for me, though I know it probably wasn't.

Pick a poem, any poem.

Okay, here's a poem I pick for you Ashlea. Songs to Survive the Summer by Robert Hass. I don't think it's available to download online. And it's rather long, so it's not in many anthologies. So I'll be patient until you can get to a library. No rush. It's included in a volume of his entitled Praise, I believe.

 

[Ashlea]

Okay, here's a poem I pick for you Ashlea. Songs to Survive the Summer by Robert Hass. I don't think it's available to download online. And it's rather long, so it's not in many anthologies. So I'll be patient until you can get to a library. No rush. It's included in a volume of his entitled Praise, I believe.

Hmm. Might be a difficult one to run down, the public libraries here are not very fond of poetry. Plus, I have a bit of an unpaid library fine.

I'll see what I can find, though. I'm resourceful.