Now This Is Talent

So for one of my homework assignments tonight I had to write a sonnet. It was an exercise in making sure we understand things like simile, antithesis, oxymorons, alliteration, etc. Personally, I would much rather have labeled all of these things in one of Shakespeare's sonnets instead of having to make up one of my own, especially since I had to re-read Julius Caesar* tonight for our quiz tomorrow and I still have to label all of my operatives in my scene so I can work with my scene group tomorrow. Oh, and for Thursday we have to read both Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra for quizzes. That's a good four or five hours of reading, at least. In other words, there is a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done for class before Thursday, and the addition of having to write a sonnet on top of it all made me feel thisclose to panic.

*Incidentally, Julius Caesar may be the title of the play, but he's so not the main speaking character. Caesar dies in the third act, in case you don't remember this fact from sophomore English class. I sure didn't. So just in case you ever find yourself in a situation where a whole group of people is going to read the entirity of Julius Caesar aloud in one sitting and study it for a quiz (and really, I don't know why you'd ever find yourself in that situation, but just in case), it's actually a wise idea to volunteer to be Caesar. 'Cause he dies and then you get to chill for two acts. You definitely don't want to be Brutus or Cassius because they talk in massive 20+ line chunks throughout the whole damn play. Guess who Liz and I were? Yeah. I was smart enough not to pick Brutus (actually, I don't think Liz picked Brutus either, I think he was just the only major character left by the time it was her turn to choose) but I'd forgotten how major Cassius is. Freakin' Cassius.

So anyway, I was not thrilled about having to write a sonnet, but it turns out that it's pretty easy to churn out a sonnet in less than half an hour if you're not at all concerned with being clever. The result:

I hate the hot heat of a summer's day,
The pavement is like coals beneath the feet.
I wish the month of June would go away,
For I do so prefer the winter sleet.
The cloud that brings the rain is a kind friend,
It gives sweet respite from a sun like fire,
But all too soon the drenching showers end,
And dark sun once again provokes my ire.
To some a heaven, I do think it hell:
The buzz of bees, the whir of sprinklers, all.
How long I'll take the heat I cannot tell,
I cannot wait each day for night to fall.
But since the summer never will be cool,
I'll spend the next months lying by the pool.

I'm now fairly certain I have a promising career as a poet. Ire and fire? Pretty good, huh? Ha. Haha. Anyway, it includes all the stuff we needed to include (which is partly why it's so awful...the cloud is a kind friend...that's some brilliant personification right there) so I'm golden. The theme of the sonnet had to be summer. My professor didn't specify that it had to be a positive poem about summer, so here's hoping it's okay that it's full of hate. And I don't really hate summer, I just needed the alliteration I could get by writing hate, hot, and heat in the same line.

So yeah. I'll try to post at least one more time before I actually leave the country, but if I don't get the chance you can just admire my sonnet skills until I get time to update from Stratford.

P.S.-Hi Mom! (And Dad, if you're actually going to read this...)