See yesterday's post for the Perinne reading schedule.  You are NOT reading "the whole chapter" with every single poem.  What you need to do is to read the explanatory part at the start of each chapter up to and including the review boxes.

TODAY IN CLASS
Sonnets, continued.  Reminder:  all sonnets have 14 lines, all sonnets are iambic pentameter.
They differ in the rhyme scheme and structure.  The Donne poems were Italian sonnets.  Now we're looking at Shakespearean sonnets. (We will skip Spenserian . . . Google if you wish.)

So today--first, Sonnet 73:  "That time of year thou may'st in me behold . . ."
Why start there?  The most "pure" example of the Shakespearean form: three quatrains plus a closing couplet, with one central metaphor per quatrain (other embedded images/devices).

I am not repeating the essential paraphrase here, because I want people who were absent to give it a shot on their own (don't look anything up).

Then we turned to Sonnet XII-- "When I do count the clock that tells the time . .  , " In both classes we looked at the iambic pentameter perfection of that first line, but in 3rd we need to do two more things:  essentially answer the "so what" to "why so regular," and  . . . (drum roll) practice saying the line over and over, faster and faster.  What do you hear"  What key sounds?  What do the key sounds sound like??  [One of the later Perinne chapters is on sound devices, but poems do not package their elements in discrete dollops to be parceled out in sequential order.]

We looked at the first 8 lines of this poem well, finding out that the first quatrain has four separate images to note the passage of time; the second quatrain has two.  In 3rd we still need to unpack the "And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, / borne on the bier with white and bristly beard."

In BOTH--we need to move on to the last 6 lines.

FOR TOMORROW
Study (on your own, no looking up) "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought" on the same hand-out.  Look at structure.  Look at diction.  How does diction form part of the basis for overarching metaphors?  What are the "fields" or disciplines that the sonnet draws on for its imagery? What else to you notice?  Figure out all you can about this poem just using your own insight.  We will want to be quick and thorough with this one.

Because then we will move on to a different group of poems.  From the book, people, so bring it! :)