The page represents you. This is what I tell my High School Sophomore English students. I tell them this when they ask me why we have to bother with grammar and writing and reading and school in general.  I tell them – the page represents you. And you will be judged by what scratches you leave upon it. In person, you may be an awesome, dynamic, witty, clever, quick-thinking being, but You will not accompany the email/tweet/resume/collection of poems/STAAR essay answer that you send out into the world.  Those who read your unaccompanied words may have never met you in person.  But, they will read these words and feel as though they know you or your “type” at least.  Some of these people will only be doing their jobs; others will just be doing what comes natural to all human beings: categorizing.

Humans categorize; they sort, they filter, they color code.  It’s how they function in the day to day without getting lost in information.  For example, let’s take a look at the job vacancy that just received 300 applications.  The job needs to be filled in a month – not a lot of time to filter.  No cover letter? – bin it! Not qualified yet? – bin it! No experience? – bin it!  Too much experience? – bin it! and on it goes. So, let’s say you make it to the pile of twenty on the table, just bear with me here. Your application sits on the table with 19 others for one position.  This is when they read the cover letters.  Tell me – do you think grammar matters now?

Okay, breathe. Let’s back it up a bit. William Shakespeare. Right so, not that far, but how about a look at his sonnets. He is perhaps the most well known of English writers, as to whether or not he is the greatest I will leave that up to countless other treatise. This is not that discussion.  Nonetheless, Shakespeare is considered canon material and we are introduced to him from pretty early on in our development.  Every year I have taught him, my students groan and moan and sigh very heavily.  The thought of not only having to write poetry, but also to have to write the way some guy who lived an ancient time ago dictated is absolutely abhorrent to them.  I say “yes, yes, it’s all very terrible and ghastly, but none the less, I expect 14 lines with ‘abab cdcd efef gg’ rhyme scheme written in iambic pentameter by the end of class.”

We don’t start with writing sonnets though; we start with reading them.  At first glance, all the students hear is the archaic sounding “shall I compare thee’s” and summer’s leases “hathing” etc.; and they, perhaps rightly, believe it “hath” nothing to do with them.  Of course, this is not true. For Shakespeare’s greatest gift is that his meaning to every generation is found in translation.  It is a wonderful moment when my students go from the lovely-dovey “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate” of his 18th Sonnet to his not so flattering 130 Sonnet – “And in some perfumes is there more delight/than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.”  They look at me kind of funny and say, “Wait. Is he saying her breath stinks?” Yes, yes this is exactly what he is saying.  As I watch them giggle and nudge each other, I am reminded of my first years of college when I discovered that Chaucer was dirty old man who liked to write “filth.”

I do not keep things from my students.  I tell them all the gossip, I mean, theories relating to Shakespeare.  Most of my students have experienced some form of trauma in their lives, I think they can handle the idea that Shakespeare might have been writing his love poems to a man.  There are great theories surrounding Shakespeare: he never existed, he was gay, he was a collection of writers at that time who chose to write under a single name, he was actually Queen Elizabeth writing incognito. Okay, the last one I made up.  However, there are always multiple theories in life, there is very little solid information out there, very few things we can know with certainty, and we’re not just talking about Shakespeare any more.  

I remember how I felt about writing when I was the same age as my students.  I found form poetry so restricting.  I felt it stifled the process and creativity.  My poetry was free, it flowed through me, it was inspiration, I was only the vessel, et cetera, et cetera. And this conviction was so righteous, that I don’t think I have tried my hand at sonnet writing again until my appalled Sophomore class, said “Well, aren’t you going to write one, if you think they are so great?”  I blustered and guffawed and then I relented.  Okay then, alright, I could do this.  I often give the same two options for theme, one is the traditional love sonnet – good love, unrequited love, love soars, love sucks, no matter – and then the alternative is to write a sonnet about how much it blows to have to write a sonnet. I choose an altered form of the second – how much my students hate writing sonnets.  Right so, first line – My students are always complaining – darn 4 and ½ iambs.  My young students are always complaining. ha! easy peasy… now what rhymes with complaining….  I wrote this piece a few years ago, and, alas, it is nowhere to be found.  I’d written it on the back of a piece of looseleaf paper, and it took me the rest of the class period.  My students and I worked together – mostly in silence, but every once in a while one of us would say what rhymes with this word? and would someone count my syllables?  I no longer have the poem, but it’s a great memory.  

Accept in its stead, this piece I wrote as a response to a prompt at my writer’s group.  We had just read the poem, “Men as Friends” by Robin Becker.  We were tasked with writing a piece that explored the idea of “something as friends.”  I thought this might be a good opportunity to practice the sonnet form again and wrote this response about my dad.  He died nearly six years ago.  I thought that perhaps the restraint of the form might help distance from the grief.  It did, and it didn’t.

“Ghosts as friends”

Nothing remains of what you used to be.
Your clothes recycled ashes cast away.
The house is sold with no estate for me.
Not that I mind, I’m never one to stay;
You taught me that habit from early on
Packing and moving from home to abode
Seas we crossed, lands traversed and forgotten
all part of the fun you promised and told
a great adventure awaits us beyond
you cannot spend your life looking back dear
you will thank me once you have reached the end
You cannot focus on the things you fear.
I now can thank you for my wander lust.
Travel with me still, only as a ghost

Your Turn! 

Lines: 14
Rhyme: abab cdcd efef gg
Rhythm: Iambic Pentameter [“ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum”]