Category Archives: Sonnets

Sir John Gielgud and Alfred Corn read Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare. Listen!

…If you are ever going to memorize a sonnet of Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 may be the one because it is beautiful to say, easy to understand, and anyone with just a little practice can communicate it. Sonnet 18 is one … Continue reading →

Sonnets 1 through 19 written by William Shakespeare and read by Sir John Gielgud

11 Apr ’21

Shakespeare’s first nineteen sonnets are addressed to a handsome young man. Procreation is its own kind of heaven, Shakespeare tells him, urging him to breed, not waste his seed, but live on through his offspring. Beginning in sonnet fifteen, … Continue reading →

Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare

10 Jul ’18

… … When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich … Continue reading →

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

30 Jun ’18

… Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of … Continue reading →

Sonnet 98 by William Shakespeare

25 Apr ’17

… It’s April. Everything is young and beautiful. But you’re not here. It might as well be winter. You’ve cast your shadow over everything. … From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dress’d in all … Continue reading →

Sonnet 60 by William Shakespeare

16 Apr ’17

… Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, … Continue reading →

Ozymandias

19 Aug ’16

… I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer … Continue reading →

Bernadette Mayer reads Sonnet written with Philip Good

30 Jun ’15

… At her home in East Nassau, New York, Bernadette Mayer reads a sonnet that she wrote with Philip Good. … … … … … Sonnets is published by Tender Buttons Press. You can check them out here: https://www.tenderbuttonspress.com/ … … Continue reading →

Bernadette Mayer reads from the Sonnets: We Eat Out Together

29 Jun ’15

… My heart is a fancy place Where giant reddish-purple cauliflowers & white ones in French & English are outside Waiting to welcome you to a boat Over the low black river for a big dinner There’s a lot of … Continue reading →

Bernadette Mayer reads from the Sonnets: Taking the Humbler Path for Ron Padgett

26 Jun ’15

….. “TAKING THE HUMBLER PATH” ………for Ron Padgett Was excellent advice from Ron In a dream I fell We were walking in the rush hour Got pushed into a snowbank By a man in a Bentley &climbingoveritIfellinlikeGreek&Latin Scared at first … Continue reading →

Edwin Denby reads The Climate and People on Sunday

17 Apr ’15

… … THE CLIMATE I myself like the climate of New York I see it in the air up between the street You use a worn-down cafeteria fork But the climate you don’t use stays fresh and neat. Even we … Continue reading →

Sonnet 8 from A Sonnet Sequence by Edwin Denby

15 Apr ’15

… From 1976 until 1983, Jacob Burckhardt recorded and edited Edwin Denby reading from his Collected Poems. Here is Sonnet 8 from A Sonnet Sequence. 8 Three old sheepherders so filthy in their ways Whores wouldn’t touch them with a … Continue reading →