Final Project--To Poetically re-imagine Shakespeare plays and particular scenes.

Thorned King

Through entangled crowned hairs and blazing light

Through a thousand hells

He led her to her endless plight,

or so the story tells.

A flattered public display he preferred

Over Cordelia’s ‘nothing’ so pure

Abandoning the truth that she lent

To fire, it he sent.

But for a demand speech of reassurance, the price is great,

Soon they’d prick and thorn his life to darken his days

For loving the unloving delivers an unfortunate state

And after the battle, in the ground they lay

remembering nothing…

Life, for him, the price of momentary fame,

Brought fractured hearts to what was just a double-talk game

Eventually, he recalled what he forgot

But still more evil came, more pain wrought.

All the good he once sought,

All his work came to not.  

At the end, he looked at her lips, asking to deliver something so vibrant

Never recalling that she said to “Love, and be silent.”

Author’s Note: I attempted to transform particular plays and scenes into poems. The theme for this poem is that love makes no speaking sound. This poem serves to encapsulate the story of King Lear, emphasizing the consequences of his love test. For some of my poems, I included a few images in order to help with this mental visualization. 

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Unmade

Similar to the smell of water,

She is nature rather than art

And is weathered silent on this frozen ground

but still dazzles you so.

Something born, made, recreated?

As something that arrived too late for words

It moves you slowly toward the gray, cloudy footage that memory preserves

Echoing now as a confusing imitation

Within this stone

There is something brilliant suffused inside

The gaze is still

But there is no place she does not see you.

Like a fantasy that plays upon our sight

Seducing you at every moment

Tricking your focused eye

A work trapped in the almost,

Looking for movement and for words

If squeezed hard enough,

she will emerge like a pit from a dried up plum

still audible to you.

A burst, a shatter

A cracking of that outer crust of rock

Breaking the heavy fossil layers that borders

A deeper heartbeat repeating, move, move

Following the music of her conductor,

Senses now replacing the empty air

Words fluent on her lips.

Author’s Note: In this poem I attempt to re-imagine the scene of Hermione’s statue (how the statue serves to suspend our disbelief), while at the same time positioning her character as it relates to her husband, King Leontes. The statue serves to puzzle us, and I try to capture this unsure/ambiguous moment from both the character’s perspective (Leontes) and the audience’s (Is she moving or not? Has she been living this whole time or restored/resurrected? How is this statue tricking our senses?).  The poem also focuses on how language (language as it relates to knowledge and being “real” or human) or oral exchange is an important theme in the play. Moreover, in this poem, I attempt to recreate the scene of when she’s attempting to come back to life. At the end of the poem, she is a “nature’s art” realized.

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The Storyteller

On a wintery night outside of time,

Sitting like two innocent lovers

Upstairs, the boy begins a paper-filled sad tale

Next to the rain-stained window

He tenderly steals his mother’s warmth

encircling them are envious crickets

wishing to hear about the man dwelling in a churchyard,

wanting to be frightened by fantastical sprites.

On his mother’s lap he intently whispers to her

all of the best secrets to a winter’s tale

but the fantasy of whispering will overwhelm

a suspicious husband, a jealous king

Giving in to the mind's flat-noted chorus and

with a center long iced over

He rips them like a paper in two

The boy did not complete the season,

his story of ripe bitter melons and green caterpillars

resting underneath the leaves

of pearl pumping seas

of a love discovered

was a story untold, unsatisfied.

But perhaps it’s an unscheduled tale that breathes in the absence of words,

is restored, surviving in the nameless space that is our imagination

The fresh unknown stopping to let us board

Inviting us to toss whatever we have in our minds' pockets
Just a patch of frozen water,
waiting to melt.

Will the story be to find what is missing?

Author’s Note: In this poem, I attempt to create the scene of Mamillius and his mother in The Winter’s Tale. In short, I attempt to show how the act of whispering, in addition to the visual or theatrical display of heartful bodies touching, may upset (or trigger) a jealous husband. Furthermore, the main point of this poem is to think back to how Shakespeare uses absence or offstage events. Ultimately, what this poem is saying (even though I shouldn’t say it myself as it undermines my poem’s point) is that it’s better to let the audience imagine the story themselves---to fill in the blanks all on their own (a story found). I added details to the story by including caterpillars, bitter melons, and so forth, to hint at how my mind would re-imagine Mamillius’ story. Overall, I also hope that readers’ begin asking themselves, “Is what’s sad about Mamillius’ story lies in the fact that he never got to finish it?”