NaPoWriMo Day 27: Shakespearean Sonnet

And now for our (optional) prompt. Our video resource for the day promises to teach you everything you need to know to write a Shakespearean sonnet, but I’m not going to ask you to do that, exactly. Instead, I’d like to challenge you to “remix” a Shakespearean sonnet. Here’s all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. You can pick a line you like and use it as the genesis for a new poem. Or make a “word bank” out of a sonnet, and try to build a new poem using the same words (or mostly the same words) as are in the poem. Or you could try to write a new poem that expresses the same idea as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets,

I had a tough time selecting a sonnet from the wonderful collection of the great writer. I finally selected his sonnet XXII.

Inspired from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXII

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,


For I’m as old as I believe myself to be

My beauty, my age, for me to behold

All I see in your eyes, a longing for me

For beauty, seemly a raiment of my heart

Heart that grows but never gets old

How can then I, be old or discharged

For I count not my days, but love that extolled

O! therefore I am, of myself, so wary

Trust I not, dear you, to nurse my heart

For only love and care, make my soul merry

Whilst you, a disciple of external beauty; a factitious art

Convince me not I’m old, you or the mirror,

Count not my breath, O mirror; my heart I hold dear

©Vandana Bhasin

27.04.2019