April is Poetry #22: Open House at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Some pictures from the annual open house today at the Folger Shakespeare Library: 

 

Happiness reigned.

For some.

I think the little one in the pink bow is saying: This is SO not my century.

But again: check out how regal that girl in blue behind her looks!

I wonder which one Shakespeare would've written about.

What would the bard do?

Praise blue bird of happiness

Or ensoul a pout?

There was also this highly uncomfortable looking chair.
Perhaps that would make someone, even a princess, unhappy.

My favorite reading nook

Shelves of folios

The famous Seven Ages of Man window

You could roast a moose in there.

Emerson Fireplace

I looked up the quote in Barteby's online, which says these lines are from Emerson's  “Solution,” lines 35–42, Poems, p. 222 (1918).

England’s genius filled all measure Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure, Gave to the mind its emperor, And life was larger than before: Nor sequent centuries could hit Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit. The men who lived with him became Poets, for the air was fame. Ah, well, then. I would've liked to breathe that air.

Poetry Friday: What gives us shape?

Elizabethan clothing
 (or what gave bodies shape in those times)

Last week, I attended No Kidding Shakespeare Camp for the second year in a row. (You can read about last year's rowdy adventures here.) This year was less rambunctious, perhaps due to the overarching theme (structure), but absolutely satisfying all the same. We heard from the architect who designed the lovely Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, talked trapdoors and lighting and costuming and rhetoric in the early modern theater, and saw a rehearsal of Hamlet and two plays---Shakespeare's The Tempest and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.

The structure of the ceiling of the Blackfriars Playhouse
in Staunton, VA

As last year, I was awed by the actors' generosity, both in their performances and in their interactions with guests at the American Shakespeare Center. Watching the rehearsal of Hamlet was like watching a fabulously scary and wonderful roller coaster assemble itself on stage. In addition to the complex characters being built from Shakespeare's twisty and highly structured language, the cast is also constructing the ride's special effects. The ASC has no tech crew or elaborate sets; so when the ghost walks, it's the actors who create the supernatural atmosphere, from eery wind noises to the cock crowing to the trumpets that signal the change of scene. It was amusing and impressive to see the director call for someone who could do a cock crow and have the actors sort it out from backstage; ditto for the trumpet volley, which was offered vocally in three different riffs for the director to choose from. All the while, between these bursts of practical machinery adjusting, the actors played on, creating the emotional tracks on which the audience will rise and plunge. I can't wait to go back and see this Hamlet, which previews July 10.


Actors Ben Curns and Allison Glenzer also came to our camp sessions on rhetoric and played out, on the spot, variations to monologues they had so securely in their heads and bodies that no matter what we threw at them, they absorbed it and reflected the change back to us.  Ben's portrayal of Caliban in The Tempest was nearly overwhelming to watch at close range---he creates a "monster" so piteous and clearly abused that you ache for justice and some human dignity for him, and yet by turns, he is reprehensible, ridiculous, and soaked in such a lust for revenge and love that he will commit to anyone that will give him a taste of it. In a later session, we circled Allison, as she invested Trinculo, the jester, with swaggeringly false wisdom and hilariously shaky bravado as he inspects the "half-man/half-fish" of Caliban's hidden body.  She then shared her clown training and how she "vacuums out" the female characteristics of herself to reveal the men she's often cast to play. It was a rare gift to watch both of them.

A camper tries on the French wheel

As to the two play performances I saw, they were brave and lovely and funny, and I highly recommend you get to Staunton and see them for yourself.  The Importance of Being Earnest, while not Shakespeare, certainly has the language chops, and the troupe served up Oscar Wilde's witty skewering of humanity with relish. The entire cast was wonderful, but I was especially fond of Rene Thornton's Jack, whose sincerity in pursing love to its confused ends was a foil to all the brittle barbs flying about. It turns out earnestness is endearing. :)

Equally as strong, The Tempest opens with a stunning storm, created by the actors out of not much beyond thin air, strong rope, and a broad sheet of cloth. The players then go on to invest the play with waves of comedy, more than usual for The Tempest, I think. The performances include a sympathetic Prospero---a feat accomplished by James Keegan's calm-in-the-center portrayal---and a cleverly funny Miranda/Ferdinand romance, courtesy of Miriam Donald and Patrick Midgley, and of course, Ben Curns's heart-wrenching Caliban and Allison Glenzer's boisterous Trinculo as mentioned above.

A completely hand-sewn ruff

To me, Shakespeare's The Tempest asks us: okay, so what would YOU do if you were in charge of the world? Or if that's too much, a little island? Or for that matter, a stage? Or, say, even smaller, our own bodies? How many ways do we want to be master of our fates and yet choose the most unworthy ways to structure our lives?

Which brings me, at last, to Poetry Friday. Having Fridays filled with poetry is a sound way to anchor a week, I think. Poetry asks us to give shape to our days.  To ask what we're playing at.

Months ago, I attempted a sestina at the urging of my Poetry Sisters, but never shared it. It's a terrifying kind of poem, shaped by a scheme that asks you to repeat the same set of six words over and over in a rotating pattern.  I learned a lot by writing it, mostly that rules are how we begin the game.  After that, it's play on, as hard as you can.

Play on (a sestina)

I was made, as all, to make a mark,

made hasty fast, BANG! here

on floorboards cast,

a slight of light

hooked by barb of sperm with crooked line

to tender egg, in open-mouthed want.

I want for want

of what’s marked

as mine, biting at the flick of line---

Quickly there! No, fast, hold to here!

Chasing lapping rounds of light

shedding mortal coil and wormlike cast

til I’m a roil of slurry caught in rigid cast

to drain of stinging want;

fettered, I’m released as light---

a fellow of “no likelihood or mark.”

Is there nothing of me here?

Shut up; you distress the line.

Speak trippingly as tongue can master line;

for the die is---oh the drama!---fatal cast;

soon we’ll be---as they say---anywhere but here

where patrons queue to satiate their want

in gilded halls as barren as St. Mark’s,

while we make part with shadowed light

and in full sight of all our breath do heat til we light

a raw-birthed tempest between the ordered lines;

crack winds! blow cheeks! we overtop the given marks

end-stopped by neither fixed form nor as by words forecast;

filled---after---with wanton wonton want---

hey! ho! nonny! absurdity follows brilliance here

Lost in the now and here

in wasted light

tell me you didn’t want

it and I’ll make the words align.

I’ll release, as falconer does, the pairs as cast:

On the mark, by the mark, to the mark, we were such an easy mark

All we want is here

unmarked by time and reformed by light

Line to line, we ourselves recast.

---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Elaine at Wild Rose Reader

What does it all mean?
Talking about the play 

More pictures from Shakespeare Camp are here. A snapshot of the week's schedule is below.

Poetry Friday: The Comedy of Errors

Image from the Folger Shakespeare Theater

My husband and I saw Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors at the Folger Shakespeare Theater last weekend. It was a twisty farce done up right with clever masks and extraordinary physical clowning.

But, as most comedies do, it got me thinking seriously.

From The Comedy of Errors, here is Antipholus of Ephesus at the end of the play, in Act V, Scene I, describing his earlier mental health evaluation by a Dr. Pinch:


"They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A dead-looking man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 'twere, outfacing me,
Cries out, I was possess'd. Then all together
They fell upon me, bound me, bore me thence
And in a dark and dankish vault at home
There left me and my man, both bound together;"


Well, that IS what happened. We saw it in Act III, Scene IV. But it was all a big misunderstanding. Because Pinch thought Antipholus was someone else. Namely, his twin, also named Antipholus, but of Syracuse.

So why is it funny to hear Antipholus's outrage at the incident? Especially when he concludes with this (unwitnessed) account of his escape:

"Till, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder,
I gain'd my freedom, and immediately
Ran hither to your grace; whom I beseech
To give me ample satisfaction
For these deep shames and great indignities."


Well, it's funny because of the gnawing.

But mostly, we delight in his over-the-top catalog of Pinch's faults, an exaggeration with which we secretly concur, having seen the duped doctor's monstrously unjust mistake just stage minutes earlier.

Which brings me to my serious thinking: How much of poetry is built on the fulcrum of error? Overblown words balancing on one teensy tiny point of truth?

Many poems describe what we, as ordinary people, have already witnessed---we've all seen a flower, or a bird, or a deserted street. We all lived through loss and love and danger and disaster. We don't need poets to catalog the soap operas of our lives.

No, we need them to make deliberate errors in their wild depictions of such things. We need their words to bind us, to confirm our madness, to force us to gnaw our way out of the "dark and dankish vault."

Is that an exaggeration? Yup. Go ahead and Pinch me.

A review of The Comedy of Errors and a short video preview can be found in the Washington Post. If you want to see it, a limited number of standing room only tickets are available for the run through March 6.  The dramaturg's notes are here.

The Comedy of Errors is also playing at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA through March 31.  Their Ten Things You Might Like to Know about the play is great background material. And as a side note, registration for their Shakespeare camps for adults is now open. Go! Make your own errors! I did last year, and may do it again.

Poetry Friday is hosted today at The Small Nouns.

Is this not good?: Shakespeare Camp

"Spectacularly rowdy and fun-filled." So says one review of the American Shakespeare Center's current production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, VA.

Shakespeare Straight Up

I couldn't agree more. I haven't been a Shrew hater since the marvelous BBC ShakespeaRe-Told version, and this rapid-fire, intelligent, and juicy take on the Kate/Petruchio love affair in an intimate theater where they're proud to say they "do it with the lights on" sealed the deal for me. At a key moment---"Kiss, me Kate!"--- in what some have deemed a "problem play," Petruchio, with great affection and glee, asks the audience, "Is this not good?" And the audience, entranced by a production that discards any safety net under Shakespeare's hotly debated play, responds with unforced, approving laughter. It was indeed that good.

So you won't be surprised that I've chosen "Is this not good?" as a way into describing the week of No Kidding Shakespeare Camp I experienced last week at the same Blackfriars Playhouse. This was no academic lecture-fest. This was the kind of camp where you come home with a red clown nose in your purse.

Me with Daniel Kennedy, talented actor and Moscow Clown School graduate.
The best thing about him was that he made us all comfortable enough to be silly. That's a rare skill.

I also learned to dance . . .

Learning the pavane, a slow, courtly dance
We also did a more lively "country dance" called The Hey

That's our graceful and patient instructor, Doreen Bechtol, in the pink flowy pants

. . . and to wield a sword.

I only got to pose with this sword.
We actually used whiffle bats in our fight choreography.
(See below)

Fight Director Colleen Kelly demonstrates how to execute a parry

The whiffle bats came complete with a handy Shakespearean insult
The blue line is to remind us numskulls to parry at the far end of the bat---and not near anyone's fingers 

This was how we began: with an insult.
 The response was: "Villain, thou liest!"

Colleen Kelly demonstrating how to stay a safe distance from your partner.
I was impressed by her preparedness, down to the nth degree.
 Perhaps it comes from teaching stage combat to teenagers.

And that's but a taste of the goodness. (See the end of the post for a scan of our full schedule.)

There were talks about casting---This is a play, people. The first thing you ask is not: how does Shakespeare explore the theme of jealously in Othello or how many iambs in that foot, but: how many players can we hire and who can double and how will we manage and/or afford all this? (With a clever, clever spreadsheet, it turns out.)

There were sessions on rhetoric, which I swear to you, had all of us dying to sign up right then and there for a full-length class in said subject. There's a reason that rhetoric, with all its myriad, artful ways of delivering and repeating information, is so essential to theater. An audience can't flip back a page and look something up. Best nail it into our brains with the tools of anadiplosis or assonance.

We were invited to three talk-backs with the actors, one cast party, one mesmerizing professional rehearsal, and two ticketed productions, Taming of the Shrew and Othello, by which---ask my husband if I didn't sigh wearily when I first heard these two plays were our offerings---I was completely seduced.

I told you of my devotion to the Blackfriar Playhouse's staging of Shrew at the beginning of this post. I was equally waylaid by their Othello. Good Lord, I never recognized Iago's wife, Emilia, as the emotional linchpin to this story of broken trust and revenge, but thanks to actress Allison Glenzer (a military brat, I have to shout out!) I was shaken, even with the jaded heart I often bring to a production of the doomed Othello. It's her determined refusal to be silent, and not to be manipulated, that brings Iago's house of cards crashing down. It was her wasteful, yet utterly necessary death that made tears sting my eyes, after I'd survived the death of Desdemona (who was played magnificently by thoroughly grounded Texan actress, Sarah Fallon.)

And that twisted, talented Iago. Who would've thought I might identify with his frustration and jealousy? It's all there in the play, but it was brilliantly unveiled by actor Ben Curns who had such unashamed affection for his role of Iago that the audience was beguiled longer and more deeply by his deceptions that any other production I've seen. Which of course, made us freeze in horrified silence when, protesting not, telling not, we see his lies reap avoidable deaths we refused to stop.

The ever-generous Sarah Enloe, Director of Education,
on the Blackfriars Playhouse stage
where many of our sessions took place

Me, trying out some of Shakespeare's embedded stage directions under the guidance of 
skilled actor and director, Bob Jones, who is also a student 
in the Mary Baldwin College Shakespeare and Performance MFA progam.
In this case, the implied action is between Cleopatra and Charmain

In short, I, along with about eighteen other campers, was treated to a week of mind-blowing insight into Shakespeare as alive on the stage. If I took away two main thoughts--and these are not my ideas, but what I learned from the combined efforts of the NKSC crew--- they are

1) Shakespeare spring-loaded his plays with everything necessary for a small troupe to put up a play on short notice with minimal rehearsal and scant resources, while leaving the maximum amount of space for the individual actor to create as big-hearted a part as possible. I was convinced of this by a workshop in which we enacted scenes using only "cue scripts"---scripts that contained only our lines and the short cues before them. In Shakespeare's time, these were given out on hand-sized scrolls---hence, the term "Role." No one actor studied the entire play and attempted to "understand" it. They memorized gloriously well-constructed lines, they listened for their cues, and the scene unfolded in the most genuine manner possible. Think of it! In life, each knows his own lines---just barely---and it's only God, or in a play's case, the audience, who views the overall "arc" of the action.

Which brings me to

2) It's the audience---yes, us, the lowly audience---who is the third leg---along with players and play---which makes theater stand out from other art forms as a collaborative, moment-by-moment creation.

Which is the reason (along with historical accuracy) that the American Shakespeare Center doesn't turn down the house lights. They NEED the audience to play its parts---yes, the very roles Shakespeare writes for them to literally embody--- in order for the transition from page to stage work. Think of all those carefully scripted asides---who do you suppose the actors are talking to? Not an empty theater! Think of an Othello in which Iago can't communicate with the audience, and thereby not make them complicit in his machinations. Think of a Shrew in which there are no married couples, or about-to-be married couples, or never-ever-want-to-be married couples watching who recall the well-argued bargains they've made with each other in the name of love, and recognize Petruchio's defiant "If she and I are happy, what's it to you?" Think of the famous St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V without a rag-tag bunch of groundlings to swell into a heroic "band of brothers." That's us!

Even more mind-blowing to those used to sitting in the dark, alone, watching a Netflixed movie---the audience needs each other. Theater is communal, and if we huddle, elbow, whisper, watch, wait, guess, giggle, weep, blush, and otherwise prove ourselves human together, we provide an answer to Shakespeare's question:

"Is this not good?"

Schedule for No Kidding Shakespeare Camp
Click to enlarge

P.S. There was also time for us to rehearse and stage a culminating performance (I was First Citizen in Richard III), visit a local winery and vineyard, and enjoy the charming town of Staunton, home of Mary Baldwin College. If you go, eat at Staunton Grocery, which showcases local produce in creative ways. I'm still re-living every bite of their tasting menu which consisted of young carrot salad with blood oranges, arugula, and coriander vinaigrette; white Atlantic salmon over fava beans, and a totally decadent dessert described as "Bittersweet Chocolate Soup + Earl Grey + Thyme + Yeast Doughnuts."

P.P. S. Many, many thanks to Ralph Cohen, Director of Mission, and Sarah Enloe, Director of Education, for their brilliant planning and execution of last week's No Kidding Shakespeare Camp for adults. You can find more of Ralph's unique approach to Shakespeare in his book, ShakesFear and How to Cure It. You can read Sarah's detailed post about the camp here. Actor bios and some great interviews are collected here.

P.P.P. S. Yes, you should sign up for next year!

Poetry Friday and Shakespeare's Poetry Quote of the Day

“The truest poetry is the most feigning;
and lovers are given to poetry; and what they swear in poetry
may be said, as lovers, they do feign.” ---William Shakespeare, As You Like It, (III.iii.15–17).

What I love most about As You Like It is all the feigning. The pretending. The role-playing. The deception. And yet, despite all that, the truth about love is never clearer. Here's Rosalind and Celia after Rosalind has feigned her way (disguised as a boy) through a mind-twisting duel of words with Orlando:


CELIA

    You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate:
    we must have your doublet and hose plucked over your
    head, and show the world what the bird hath done to
    her own nest.

ROSALIND

    O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou
    didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But
    it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown
    bottom, like the bay of Portugal.

CELIA

    Or rather, bottomless, that as fast as you pour
    affection in, it runs out.

ROSALIND

    No, that same wicked bastard of Venus that was begot
    of thought, conceived of spleen and born of madness,
    that blind rascally boy that abuses every one's eyes
    because his own are out, let him be judge how deep I
    am in love. I'll tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out
    of the sight of Orlando: I'll go find a shadow and
    sigh till he come.




I'll go find a shadow and sigh . . .  and again we're back to the feigned (shadow) . . . isn't Shakespeare the best at casting light on love?

Poetry Friday is hosted this Shakespeare's birthday by Anastasia at Picture Book of the Day.

This post is part of a month-long celebration of not-quite-daily quotes about poets, poems, and poetry. For more quotes, see the archive of the Poetry Quote of the Day. There are many more National Poetry Month celebrations across the Kidlitosphere.

Make Haste!

Make haste! Kelly is running a contest for Brush Up Your Shakespeare Month, and you only have until tomorrow, midnight, to post your favorite bit of his poetry for a chance to win a Folger Shakespeare Library Edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets.  

I truly can't pick a favorite bit---for me, Shakespeare's all about how his words roll off the tongue and like a dessert buffet, whatever my mouth is tasting at the moment is the best ever!  I'm picking his Sonnet #90, only because I don't know it well, but it's dolefully delicious to recite and I adore the line "Give not a windy night a rainy morrow."

Sonnet 90

Then hate me when thou wilt; if ever, now;
Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross,
Join with the spite of fortune, make me bow,
And do not drop in for an after-loss:
Ah, do not, when my heart hath 'scoped this sorrow,
Come in the rearward of a conquer'd woe;
Give not a windy night a rainy morrow,
To linger out a purposed overthrow.
If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last,
When other petty griefs have done their spite
But in the onset come; so shall I taste
At first the very worst of fortune's might,
And other strains of woe, which now seem woe,
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.

I hope someone cuts me off in traffic today

 . . . because I'm having waaaay too much fun with this Shakespeare insult generator.  

Thou dankish toad-spotted lout!

Thou puking fly-bitten gudgeon!

Thou lumpish tickle-brained flax-wench!

If no one obliges me by being rude on the road, I'll save myself for the louts/gudgeons/flax-wenches who leave their grocery carts smack in the middle of a parking spot.

Yes, that is my pet peeve. If you are able-bodied, your cart should go into the corral. Rain does not excuse you! Because, you know, then I have to get out of my car in the rain and MOVE your cart to pull into the spot.

Thou mewling idle-headed flap-dragon!

On a brighter note, Kelly Fineman will be posting about Shakespeare the entire month of June. 

Poetry Friday: Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds

On love, age and alteration...

 Take #1: What to do with worn books culled from the library?

Give them to art students who will lovingly alter them.  (link via Layers Upon Layers) After the gallery show, the aged books went back into the library system as new items, where you can now borrow such things as that Shakespearean-looking book ruff.  

Take #2:  the BBC's remake of Much Ado About Nothing.

 

Be warned: it's witty, well-acted and highly entertaining, but the director's changed the old play almost out of recognition, setting the feuding Benedick and Beatrice in a modern day newsroom. There's hardly a word of Shakespeare's original verse in it ... except ... in a wholly new scene, the director has Beatrice and Benedict examine at length some of Shakespeare's words from somewhere else:  Sonnet 116. 

Take #3:

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

---William Shakespeare

Such blatant alteration, not only to modernize the play, but to stick in words that never belonged in it in the first place! Yet, it's brilliant.  In a movie with modern dialogue, to finally use Shakespeare's real words, as if to say: see? here he is, the Bard you love, changed yet unchanged, and listen! he's speaking of...love unchanging.  I think Shakespeare would have approved.

Maybe that's what great writing or interesting art or a lasting love affair is: a pattern of alterations that does not alter the essence of what is first loved.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Wild Rose Reader. 

Poetry Friday: Shakespeare Behind Bars

Today, I have poetry on film for you. Several months ago, I watched director Hank Rogerson's documentary, Shakespeare Behind Bars. I still think about it.

The premise is simple. The documentary follows a group of prisoners who are rehearsing Shakespeare's The Tempest. And what a storm it is.

Here's what Patricia Freeman says at independentfilm.com:

“When is a man forgiven?” [...] an inmate at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in Kentucky asks this seemingly innocuous question. Yet [...] these words encompass the very heart of the film; they force viewers to consider extreme states of our human existence and to reconcile how both society and man struggle to embrace felony and felicity, reproach and redemption, vice and virtue, punishment and pardon.

If this film asked us to hate these men, that would be easy. If it asked us to ignore them, that would be easy, too. But it doesn't. It asks us to see them for who they are: men who have killed people. And then we go from there into territory that only Shakespeare seems to have the language for.

I can't recommend it enough.

Go here to watch a trailer

And here for an article in the Christian Science Monitor

And here is the ending of The Tempest, which the prisoners perform:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air -- into thin air --

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Ironic, isn't it? Everything dissolves, and yet... these words don't. They find new spirits to conjure them. And the insubstantial pageant rages on.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Picture Book of the Day.

Poetry Friday: Memorizing Shakespeare

It's been too long since I mentioned Shakespeare. So...

www.MemorizeShakespeare.com

The idea is that you download an MP3 file which contains all your lines, divided into short sequences. You listen and repeat after the bell, building fluency as you go. You learn your own lines, then have them cued to you by the other character's lines.

I downloaded the free sample of Hamlet's famous "To Be or Not to Be" soliloquy, and I'm working on it. I'll let you know how it goes. Right now, I feel like "an unlettered, small-knowing soul." (Love's Labour's Lost I, 1)

So why do it? Because...

"A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs. ---from Ars Poetica by Archibald Macleish

The rest here.

Maybe I should memorize that one, too...


Poetry Friday is hosted by Kelly at Big A, little a

Collaborative Art

Remember when I shared the Letters From Rapunzel page from the collaborative book my sister, Ruth, and her friend, Jill, are making? Here's how that page got transformed into the next collage, based on Shakespeare's play, The Comedy of Errors. I especially loved how Jill twisted the post office box numbers "5667" around, making them part of "errors" on the page. (For example, the 5 becomes 5aktz, a misspelling of the five acts of the play.)




The artist, Jill Smith, says this:

"I probably should make up some exciting way the numbers you gave me immediately made me think of this play, but that would be...shall we say...an error. This time I picked the theme and figured out how to make the numbers work (more or less.) I picked Comedy of Errors primarily because we went to see it together and I enjoyed it. .....I like the idea of confusing or playful themes and added some "famous twins" images. ...The broken pieces of paper on the page represent the broken lines that start the tale and the gold chain...represents everything coming together... I used various image transfers and color laminates to connect with the concept of illusion or appearance vs. reality.... The seven sticker is supposed to be a question mark and the other numbers relate to other errors or misunderstandings on the page....

Here's her statement in its entirety, but you'll have to click on it to enlarge it enough to read it.

Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

This is a disintegrating photo, badly scanned, but for Shakespeare's birthday, I had to post it.

This is me, and a boy named Brian, rehearsing a scene from As You Like It for a high school drama competition. Last week, for her 500th blog post at Brooklyn Arden, Cheryl Klein highlighted the exact scene we are performing. So, of course, I had to run around the house until I found this picture. I'm glad I have at least one photo of this moment, because it was a HUGE deal to me to get to perform Shakespeare as a teenager. I don't think anyone had taken a scene from Shakespeare to drama competition from our school before. What fun to flirt with these words:

ORLANDO

Then love me, Rosalind.

ROSALIND

Yes, faith, will I, Fridays and Saturdays and all.

ORLANDO

And wilt thou have me?

ROSALIND

Ay, and twenty such.

ORLANDO

What sayest thou?

ROSALIND

Are you not good?

ORLANDO

I hope so.

ROSALIND

Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?

Happy (designated) Birthday, Shakespeare. You turned me into a lover of words. I've never stopped desiring too much of that good, good thing.