Live poetry class recording

10 common Shakespearean sonnets
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from April 3, 2018
in Steem Schools discord

Introduction

Hello everyone! Hive account@d-pend here for Hive account@steemitpoetry. I'm excited to bring you a recording of our recent poetry class on the topic of the Shakespearean sonnet. It was the first formal structure we've dedicated a class to, and I wanted to begin with it since it's the main one I have experience studying. We talked about the basic structure of a sonnet, which is three quatrains (group of four lines) followed by a couplet (group of two lines) employing a rhyme scheme of ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. They are written in iambic pentameter, one of the most common poetic meters for English. We used a list of some common sonnets found here: Top ten Shakespearean sonnets As I stated in the class, it's somewhat arbitrary, but some of the most famous are here. I just wanted to introduce people to this form and do a bit of analysis on some of them.

We used Open Source Shakespeare to access the individual sonnets. I later found there are ways to view all the sonnets, or compare particular ones side by side. It's a good online resource for Shakespeare's writing if you don't mind reading on the computer. I suppose you could turn them into a pdf and read on an e-book, as well.

Many of them we read through with little to no commentary, and others we picked apart line by line. I read pertinent comments and questions from the chat so you could get an idea of the engagement of these classes. Remember that anyone interested is free to join them! At the end of classes we usually have time that we share each other's poetry. On Thursdays we have a live critique class. The time is 5-7 PM GMT in the Steem Schools discord Monday through Friday. The Youtube video is embedded below.