Shall I Compare Thee?

Oh, my freakin heavens! Sonnet plus theory. One without the other can be insane in the membrane, but both together? Just shoot me now...

I'm only half serious.

By the way, happy birthday Dr. Reese (9/23). If I ventured a guess; actually, I wouldn't try to guess. As Oprah is fond of saying, Black don't crack, so there's no way of knowing. But she can't possibly be as old as me, and I'm not ready to say how old that is. Yet. (For those of you who already know, keep your mouths shut.) And to the rest of us, happy first day of autumn (same day). Finally, it just might cool off. I had no idea Dallas gets hotter the Houston.

So, on to sonnets and theory. How about first, I compare thee two (he he he). Shakespearean sonnets have specific rules. Three quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end for a total of 14 lines. The quatrains' first and third lines rhyme as do the second and fourth. Each line of the sonnet is in iambic pentameter. Very structured. Theory, although usually based on research, is generally not as confined as the sonnet. There are all these twists and nuances to theory. The same topic can be addressed fifty different ways. So, how to take something that can be all over the board and put it into a very specific 14 line format. Therein lies the rub. The theory for this assignment came from Barker and Galasinski: Cultural Studies and Discourse Analysis: A Dialogue on Language and Identity and Gauntlett's Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. B& G, very structured on the theory. Gauntlett, a bit looser,  lighter on theory, and a hint of bias (I kinda like it), but maybe that's just me.

Although we were only using as our reference the beginning of the texts, there was quite a bit of information to cover in 14 lines. I enjoyed trying to get the information in, and when I would get the perfect meter, I did a little dance in my seat, but I wasn't necessarily happy with the line itself. I did okay. Well, the information about the theory was there, but I am apparently never going to get through a class without some issue. I was so worried about trying some of the things that Shakespeare would use in order to make something work that I forgot about the things he would never do. I know, just do the assignment. Stop trying so hard. Don't put extra work on yourself; you have enough to do already. One day I will learn, hopefully, sooner than later. Well, the things he would never do became the issue for my sonnet, more because I was ready to defend the things he would do that I had tried. Keep my mouth shut. Haven't quite got that one down yet, although I am not as vocal as I used to be. Keep my mouth shut. I am learning, I promise.

Okay, so I leave class a bit, shall we say, dejected. I considered: the last time I started working on "re-writes" for this class immediately. Dr. Reese is constantly telling us to not do what we always do, which is what I had apparently done again (still trying to figure out what that is). This time, I decided to work on my assignment for my Thursday class, The Ars Poetica. Surprise, the assignment was to write a Shakespearean quatrain. This is what fell onto the page almost immediately. Actually, the first line I made up walking up the stairs to my apartment after this class. It's called "Quatrain Assignment."

As dry as sand my words appear on page.

Emoter I am not though true, inept

In either verse or prudence, I’m no sage:

A truth one day or other I’ll accept.

Kinda emo, kinda deep. So, when I'm doing it just for myself, no big deal. It kind of falls out of me, one end or other. It may be great; it may be existentialistic crap. But I don't necessarily have to have anyone else understand all of it. So, I don't worry about it as much. This class I worry about like a person obsessed as I simultaneously, absolutely love it. Wait. Something about that just sounds wrong.

Dr. Reese never said I had to do an upgrade, but I felt that I should at least re-type the sonnet and add the appropriate punctuation to make it work. After all, if I left it as is, I had not done part of the assignment - the sonnet. Even though I got all the information in, I'm not happy with the poem itself. Here's the properly punctuated sonnet:

Gauntlett’s Theory Test (Upgrade)

Exploring theories, Gauntlett – trends did find:

manipulation, retroactive need,

Adorno’s drones as object, product blind.

Reverse, said Fiske, the media’s texts we read.

An overspill of meanings activate

decoded based on one’s environment.

The nature/nurture rift on sex to date

Electra – Oedipus we underwent.

On Mulvey’s psychoanalytic film –

the scopophilic gaze at others, plus

the narcissistic gaze at you through them;

a female gaze denied, though stimulus.

For him some rather disappointing ties

regarding media, gender and I’s.

If the resulting piece has all of the required elements, but I don't like it, does that mean I got it right? God. I hope not. If that's true, there's no way I'm ever going to pass this class. All I did was take their words and arrange them in iambic pentameter. This sonnet was the closest I've come to getting it right, and yet I feel that I screwed this one up more than some of the others simply because I don't see the creativity in it. Oh snap! Did a light bulb go on? Please tell me it was just an aneurysm.

Quote (that I am attempting to burn into my brain) for the day: Knowledge is not a matter of getting an accurate picture of reality, but of learning how to contend with the world in the pursuit of our various purposes. Barker and Galasinski