The difference between a “modern sonnet” and a sonnet is that a modern sonnet is not a sonnet. I point this out to people who put their poems on facebook and say “here’s a sonnet I wrote,” when it isn’t really a sonnet at all. They almost never rhyme, they very often don’t have ten syllables per line and sometimes they don’t even have a consistent number of syllables from line to line.
They aren’t necessarily bad poems, but they aren’t sonnets. They have the same relationship as modern art has to art. Once you remove all the rules, people just paint any old damned thing and hang it on the wall.
Condoleeza Rice
Perhaps I’m being a bit of an asshole, a bit confrontational, but I’d like to make it absolutely clear that all of the poems in my book “155 Sonnets” abide by the old rules. Shakespeare had 10 syllables per line. I have 10 syllables per line. Shakespeare had 14 (sometimes 18) lines. I have 14 (sometimes 18) lines. Shakespeare’s sonnets all rhymed. So do mine.
That’s all I’m going to say about that for now.
Here’s a minority opinion for you: Morgan Freeman is over-rated. Sure, I enjoy the program he narrates on the science channel, the subject matter is fascinating, and he doesn’t totally ruin
Olivia Pope
it, as Shatner sometimes does when he’s narrating a science program, but if I was choosing someone to explain the secrets of the universe to the masses, I would choose somebody who can say “thirteen” and not “thoiteen.”
I may have written about this before but, if so, I’m writing about it again. There is one TV show I go back and forth on, and that’s Scandal. It’s definitely got drama, action, interesting, complex characters, and romance, although it’s generally a very warped, psychopathic view of romance. But, I am not sure if it’s actually exposing the dark underbelly of inside Washington politics, or if it is just, like most television, propagandizing for evil. I want to watch, but I feel guilty for watching.
And I wonder just how closely it is modeled on the Bush (43) administration. Cyrus Vane, the adviser without any conscience at all (who is also totally gay) seems to be Karl Rove. Add to that the rigging of the voting machines in Ohio incident, and that comparison seems inescapable. Then there is the President’s father. His absolute horribleness and the way he is always calling his son a loser, an idiot, and a weakling, makes me think he is supposed to be Poppa Bush.
Not the image we usually have of him, but… we know young George always had an issue of feeling inferior to his Dad, we can assume old George knows young George is an idiot, because everybody knows that, and we can be pretty sure that Old George was one seriously nasty son of a bitch because just look at the family he raised. So, I wonder if the writers of this show know some things we don’t.
Then, of course, there is the character of Olivia Pope herself. Condoleeza Rice?
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