Poetry: the best words in the best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
This quote, kindly borrowed from today’s prompt, is certainly what Mr. Shakespeare must have thought of his sonnets too. Now he will have to watch me shake his pears up. Actually, this calls for a limerick.

Two poems today. First this:
There once was a girl in Toscana
who thought she can do what she wanna:
grab hold of a bard,
shake up his vocab
and run while his pears cry for Mama.

But the challenge was this:
Challenge 27: “I’d like to challenge you to ‘remix’ a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a ‘word bank’ out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem.”
I made a mash-up of the last five, Sonnets CL (#150) to CLIV (#154), and didn’t add a single word. Enjoy.

Thy worst all best exceeds
Love: the general of hot desire,
gentle cheater, poor drudge that in my mind
is too young to know love-kindling fire
to be what conscience is, proud of this pride.
To stand in thy affairs, flesh born of love,
betraying deep oaths of thy deep kindness,
was vowing new hate after new bed-vow.
Healthful remedy gave eyes to blindness.
For I have sworn thee fair but found no cure
against strange maladies, powerful might
from holy fire of Love still to endure,
which men prove foul – a lie to my true sight.
To keep thy love, thy truth, thy constancy,
my vows are oaths of insufficiency.
Today the photos are purely decorative. That’s rosemary blooming in the featured photo. Happy spring, happy love, happy poems!


God this was hard. How do you do it?
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Ah, thanks, Bojana. You mean technically? First I copied five sonnets to a Word file (more or less randomly chosen, they were his last five, apparently). Then I split the screen. Then I found 7 pairs of rhymes to end 14 lines. Then I played around. And the limerick came up spontaneously. 😀
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I mean, any way. You played well.
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Grazie. 🙂
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❤
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I’m in awe.
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Ahhh, thank you, Claudia. He did all the work, I just played around with his words. 🙂
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Well done!
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Thank you, Maggie! 🙂
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This is the second of this sort I read today and I can’t believe how well you did this. It would take me hours to write such a thing. Love the last bit, love the rosemary.
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Thank you, Joey. It’s been great fun to do it, as technically I haven’t written a thing – all words are the Bard’s, I just copypasted them and sprinkled them around in the right rhyme scheme. 😀
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I get it, but it’s harrrrrd!
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Very nicely done! You are so creative ❤
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Thank you so much, Ishita! 🙂 I see that I like it the most when I have some structure that I get to play with.
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Very well done! You are talented. 🙂
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Ahh, thank you, Amy. These are all Shakespeare’s words, I hope this is clear! 🙂 Five of his sonnets tumbled around a little.
On another note, I saw your challenge and am worried because I’m such a “more is more is more” person. 😀 Still, I’ll prepare a special minimalistic post. Not today but soon. 🙂
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All Shakespeare’s words… 🙂
This theme is challenging for me too. I tent to fill my frame. See you later. 🙂
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Nice work with the mash-up! I tried something similar to this a while ago and it’s REALLY hard!
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Thank you, Joanne! Ohh, you did? Did you post it somewhere? It might be hard but it’s so much fun!! I really loved this task.
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hahahaha! I wouldn’t think of posting any of my attempts at poetry!!
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Hm… maybe not yet. But you can see what a supporting community has been built around WordPress. 🙂
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That is very true!
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Gorgeous photos and lovely sonnet
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Thank you, Dale! It’s easier to play with somebody else’s words. 🙂
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