Skip to main content Help Control Panel

Shakespeare's Monkeys

Infinite Monkeys. Infinite Typewriters.

More in Is it odd

Discuss: Is it odd

I spent a half-hour on the train today thinking about sonnets

1- Leanne on Jul. 2 2007

If you're desperate for a series of poems based on the sonnet, you could always write a sonnet of sonnets.  I've been halfway through one for a month, one of these days I might get back to it... I am not the most patient person.

Basically, you write a sonnet (I'm using the Shakespearean because it has the most rhyme possibilities).  Then you take the first line of the sonnet and write another sonnet.  Then you take the second line of the first sonnet, make it the first line and write another sonnet.  Then you take the third line of the first sonnet, make it the first line and write another sonnet... and so on, until you have 11 sonnets.

Sounds fun?  Sure, and so does pulling pubic hair. 

3- Jen on Jul. 2 2007

Why don't you write a sonnet about pulling other people pubic hair?

4- Leanne on Jul. 2 2007

Oh Jen, that sounds too much like a dare to me... it's breakfast time though, give me a couple of hours.

5- Leanne on Jul. 2 2007

O lovely mound so furry and so black
I'll prune you to a neat, inviting vee
For though I shave my legs and wax my back
This pleasure I indulge so tweezerly
No hairy wilderness shall be allowed
To march unchecked across these tender thighs
This pubic flesh shall stretch out smooth and proud
Beneath bikini bottom undersize
So one by one they fall, these wayward hairs
Beneath the pincer grip I wield with glee
I laugh at pain, ‘tis not for me the cares
Of cowards, faint of heart, whose bush runs free
Now look at that, your shagginess won't do:
Just bring those testes here, I'll pluck you too.

6- Leanne on Jul. 2 2007

Now what was that you were saying about sonnets that are only sonnets because people call them sonnets, even though they are nothing like what a sonnet ought to be?  Hmm...

8- Jen on Jul. 3 2007

Leanne you are too funny! 

It's  kind of like Shakespeare and Dr. Ruth rolled into one

9- Tracey on Jul. 3 2007

I propose an idea for a new movie for which I want to do the research:

"Being Leanne Hanson."

10- Leanne on Jul. 3 2007

Coffee... sunshine... misanthropy... done.

12- Pags on Jul. 4 2007

I rather like sonnets. A quick trawl of the internet and my brain came up with the following list (I think I may have invented one of these, unless you know different?)

How many of the following do you know, or accept as being a sonnet at all? What have I missed from the list??
Italian - Petrachan
Italian - Sicilain
Sonetto Rispetto
English
Shakesperian
Curtal
crown of
French
Spanish
Keats
Pushkin
Sandwich
Herioc (18 lines)
Caudate / Tailed (20 lines)
Redoubled (sonnet of sonnets = 15 linked verses)
Concrete
Unrhymed
Alfred Dorn Sonnet
Cornish Sonnet
Rosarian
Rondel Prime
Swannet
Villanelle Sonnet
Diaspora / Terza Rima Sonnet
Triolet Sonnet