I listened to this, Why Write?, today, after receiving it in my weekly NCTE email. It talks about how the best moments in life are when we communicate, and that writing is a way to do that. I write for many reasons, but that's one of them, the chance to communicate with other minds.
Isn't it amazing to read a poem written hundreds of years ago, or in another language, or by someone very different from you, and to find it still communicates with your mind?
Today I am posting a Shakespeare sonnet, written some four hundred years ago, that speaks to me today as I find my love for the people in my life growing stronger and deeper. I've used this one with middle school students, and I find they really appreciate it when you read the second last line in a certain way: "Love is a babe." Yes, yes it is.
115
Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgement knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in 'twixt rows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents,
Divert strong minds to th'course of alt'ring things!
Alas, why, fearing of Time's tyranny,
Might I not then say, "Now I love you best"
When I was certain o'er uncertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.
I'm glad Shakespeare wrote this, and that I can read it today and connect with his mind. The poem I wrote yesterday wasn't in Shakespeare's league, but it communicates with other minds too. And that makes me happy.
Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.
1 comment:
Here's to Shakespeare's writing and to our own!!
(word verification: dinsing, which I take to mean the loud chorus of all the writerly voices around the world, singing their words proudly to whatever audience will listen)
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