Category: sonnet

It’s National Poetry Month: Ways and Reasons to Join the Festivities

April has arrived, that season when in many places the growl of a lawnmower replaces the roar of a snow blower. It’s the first full month of spring, when melted ice and snow perform their usual magic, giving birth to daffodils and grass green as the hills of Ireland. Sunlight falls soft as down on…


Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46: Putting Things in the Right Order

Great literature, while seeming to highlight one important insight, often seems to be about much, much more. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 46 is an example: Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, How to divide the conquest of thy sight; Mine eye my heart thy picture’s sight would bar, My heart mine eye the freedom…


Using Well the Power to Hurt: Sonnet 94 as a Reflection on Good Government

What does a poem have to do with governing a country, any country, our country? Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94, while often interpreted as referring to the power of art patrons over artists, has a lot to tell us about who is capable of governing well and what it means to govern well. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94 They…