It isn’t often that you find a book that just begs you to read it aloud, but Pop Sonnets: Shakespearean Spins on Your Favorite Songs is that kind of rare treat. Literature nerds and music geeks will love Erik Didriksen‘s infectious mash-ups of Shakespearean verse and Top-40 hits from the last several decades. Continue reading
Upon its publication in 2015, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay on growing up black took the U.S. by storm. University of Southern California professor Claudia Rankine‘s Citizen: An American Lyric is Between the World and Me‘s lesser-known cousin, but this book-length poem is just as relevant and important as Coates’ work. Rankine’s poetry details years of micro-aggressions from acquaintances and strangers alike, as experienced by the author, her friends, and black celebrities. Continue reading
When most people think of sonnets, only one name comes to mind: William Shakespeare. As we’ve seen in this series, although the sonnet form he used is the most well-known in the main, it is certainly not the only form. After mentioning it in the two previous tutorials in this series, we set our sights on the Shakespearean sonnet.
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Last week, we talked a little bit about the history of the sonnet form in general, and the Italian sonnet in particular. We’ve still got one more week to go before we analyze English – read: Shakespearean – sonnet, though. This week, it’s all about the Spenserian sonnet. Continue reading
The sonnet is one of the most famous poetic forms, almost as recognizable as the haiku. It comes in many forms. Over the next few weeks, we’ll examine three of the most famous sonnet types. Let’s begin with the Italian sonnet.
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