Interpretation of Sonnet

Catherine Tate’s classroom performance enhanced Shakespeare’s sonnet by giving the poem, “My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”, a more infuriated tone. In the video, Catherine is performing as an insolent student who conveys Shakespeare’s sonnet, with a faster pace as if giving Shakespeare’s poem a more in depth feeling towards it. When I was reading his poem, the tone that I had captured was soft and passionate, but Catherine’s tone made the sonnet as the approach to a tragic and angering tone; she recited the poem without a care. Rushing the sonnet had made the poem into what seems hateful which contradicted how Shakespeare had interpreted the poem into a loving and admirable approach as he described the features of his mistress, such as, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red” (1-2 Shakespeare). In other words, the sonnet was meant to be an approachable and loving poem but was drawn away from it by how Catherine recited it. In addition, while watching the video the teacher, who was played by David Tennant, was having an argument with Lauren (Catherine Tate) because of her rude behavior towards him and called her dull, in which she replies “A bit like Shakespeare.” This captured my attention because this related to the tone that she used when reciting the sonnet, she read it blandly and without any interest, only reciting the sonnet without actually acknowledging the meaning. Furthermore, Catherine continued to disrupt David’s teaching until he eventually told her no more interruptions, but she continues by mocking sonnets itself or it could be that she is not only mocking sonnets but Shakespeare as well. Her response of mockery was, “Ammist I bovvered. Art thou calling my mother a pox-ridden wench? Art thou calling my father a goodly rotten apple?” Not only does she continue to mock but she also refers to David (the teacher) “My liege” which indicates him as a superior figure. I find this to be interesting because it is as if the male figure had the most power than the female figure (Catherine) in the skit. With that being said, this sonnet could have had different interpretations on how a male or female would view this piece by Shakespeare, either into a loving sonnet or an unpleasant one. 

Celeste Tejeda-Menera

You Can’t Tell Me What To Do!

Shakespeare has been widely cemented as one of if not the most important poet in history, being widely known and widely discussed. All of the pieces he has written have been examined under a microscope, over analyzed, and discussed among academia for decade after decade. Because of this, there has been a sort of negative connotation of Shakespeare among younger readers who read him in the classroom setting that Shakespeare is this dry and old writer that is purposefully confusing yet their teacher cannot shut up about him. Catherine Tate’s performance of Shakespeare’s My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130) is a perfect encapsulation of this disconnect while also demonstrating the true meaning of the sonnet itself.

The sonnet starts with painting the recipient in quite a negative light, with lines like “And in some perfumes is there more delight\ Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks” (Lines 7-8). In these lines, the speaker is straight up calling the breath of the woman he is supposedly praising repulsive and disgusting, something that you would never hear normally during this era. This continues with “I love the hear her speak, yet well I know\ That music hath a far more pleasing sound” (Lines 9-10). The speaker is recognizing that when his mistress speaks, he knows that it is not as beautiful as music, but loves it anyways. Despite all of this, it is clear that the woman that the speaker is comparing all of these things to is anything but perfect. However, in the last couplet of the sonnet, this is written: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare\ As any she belied with false compare” (Lines 13-14). This is Shakespeare stating that the mistress is so beautiful to the speaker that he finds it unnecessary to compare her to anything else as she is incomparable. It is a great way to show the beauty in imperfection as well as a rejection of the romantic norms.

This concept is brought under a modern light during Catherine Tate’s performance of the sonnet. The context of the sonnet being written is that the snobby English teacher praises the complexity of Shakespeare while the student just scoffs at it. The teacher then tells her that she will never be as good as Shakespeare, in which the student recites the sonnet from memory in a rapid fashion. She recites it very clearly, showing a great understanding and memorization of the sonnet, while also giving it a matter-of-fact tone by not embellishing any of the lines. It is essentially the student telling the teacher that you cannot put her in a box simply because of her disposition and she can enjoy Shakespeare or choose not to without the teacher dictating it to her. It is a rejection of the more traditional interpretation of Shakespeare and instead mocks and berates while also demonstrating prowess over the subject, demonstrating the “perfection” that the imperfect student demonstrates. This pairs very well with the underlying theme of the sonnet and shows great similarities between the teacher and the poets of the romantic era.

Sky Miller

Angels? Not To Us

Throughout history, and even throughout the art in time, angels have alway been depicted as being white, and to this day it is rare to see an angel that is depicted as being a person of color. In the poem Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Reservation by Natalie Diaz, she uses a metaphor to compare the white men and the angels, she explains how an “angel” in its literal definition, “a spiritual being believed to act as an attendant, agent, or messenger of God, conventionally represented in human form with wings and a long robe,” has never grazed the path of a Native tribe. Instead of Natives seeing that spiritual being that is supposed to represent all these great things they got colonizers who came and ruined their society, took away their freedom, and tried to abolish their culture and take everything they had built from them.

Diaz uses the structure of an Abecedarian poem, a poem that follows the alphabetical pattern (A, B, C…) in this case taking every line of the poem and having it follow the alphabet, to write the message of how these “Angels” have come and marginalized the Natives if her tribe. In the interview “Back to the Body: An Interview with Natalie Diaz” she emphasizes how the “The alphabet is a body, that is carrying our bodies.” Natalie explains, about her students, that she “wants them to write all the iterations of a letter. Now we just have the letter A or the letter B, but I want them to paint with a big brush and India ink, and suddenly to realize, Oh this is an art form.” She sees the alphabet as a very important thing as it is a means to express one’s true self and it has the ability to represent your body and soul. This means of writing, with the alphabet being such a big part in expressing one’s self and Diaz believing that it a way that she has found to connect herself back with here body because words can carry so much weight, and the fact that this poem emphasizes on the true nature of “Angels” and how then Natives are better off without them, “we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and ’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens” allows us to understand that there is a sense of connection to the body once again, knowing their true worth and knowing that they don’t need the help of white people in order to establish a good life for themselves, they know who they are and they know their worth.

This poem does an amazing job with tone, as I interpret this poem, I sense a stern and hostile tone towards the “angels.” Diaz is standing up for the Natives that had their lives destroyed by these white “angels” she exclaims “Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians. Remember what happened last time some white god came floating across the ocean?” By saying this Diaz clearly alludes to the English colonizers who came to America and took Native land because they believed in “manifest destiny,” in other word they believe that it was their God-given right to take that land. The Natives were quite literally silenced by these white “angels” during this period, being killed and forcefully removed form land that rightfully belonged to the them. “You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.” But at last Diaz proclaims that the “angels” were full of B.S. and that the Natives weren’t in need of them, telling the Natives that they no longer should be silenced and should no longer surrender to these “angels”

Guadalupe Lemus

Culture, Place, and the Body

For this assignment, we were tasked with looking at two poems, “I Sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman and “We are All Whitman: #2: Song of/to/My/Your/Self” by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. We were tasked with finding the comparison between the rhythmic enumeration of both poems, of which I feel as though Ambroggio takes the chaotic energy found in Whitman’s poem and translates it to people’s sense of culture and place. One of the methods that Whitman uses to create the chaotic energy of the poem is the usage of fast listing accompanied by asyndeton to make each and every object in the list striking and come out quickly. He does this to list carious body parts, such as “The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting”. Ambroggio uses this type of listing to create a chaotic energy even in the very first lines with “This Self- Hispanic, Latin, blond, black, olive-skinned, native and immigrant”. In addition to this, both poems have rapid changes in elevation in terms of voice, with there being many peaks and troughs as if the reader is going on a roller-coaster ride as they are reading each poem. This was demonstrated in class via a reading of Whitman’s poem accompanied with someone drawing the energy wavelengths as the poem was being read. As the poem went on, we watched as the energy of the poem drastically changed and went wild throughout, leading to something akin to a wild heartbeat at the end, symbolizing the chaos and “electrified body” that was reading the poem. Ambroggio certainly does this in many places, such as creating high highs of energy with “fatherland of many fatherlands” and then lowering the energy immediately afterwards with “of random breath,” and a pause. However, I feel like Ambroggio’s poem is a lot more methodical in it’s approach to the chaos: there are a lot more drawn-out sections of the poem where certain ideas or images are explored in a lot more depth than in Whitman’s poem. I feel that this change is due to the focus and theme of Ambroggio’s poem, that being on culture and place. Ambroggio’s poem is more than simply a celebration of one’s heritage and culture, like Whitman’s poem is for the body, but is much more complex than that. Ambroggio’s poem also gives question to how those cultures are influenced by outside forces, the suffering that those cultures and places endure because of it, and a closer look at the families and places that inhabit those cultures (shown in lines such as “It is harassed and startled by propellers and shrapnel, by ashes and the hammer’s hard-won pennies” showing connection to the warmongering of other nations on these places due to a profit motive). Because of this, Ambroggio’s poem takes more interest in the reasoning behind the chaos, such as what it came to be that way and the outside forces that influence the energy of these cultures and places as well as hinting at the chaos possibly being caused by these outside forces. In doing so, Ambroggio’s poem has much more structure behind the chaotic energy than Whitman’s poem.

Electric and Rhythm

In the poem “We are all Whitman: Song of/to/my/your/self” by Luis Alberto expressed many tones and different rhythms just like the poem “I sing the Body Electric” by Walt Whitman. No matter how I saw it when reading both poems I can hear the different beats and different rhythms the poems provided but even if the rhythm always changed somehow I felt lost. When discussing the poem “I sing the Body electric” in class I found it interesting how a poem can actually take away your breath away when our professor read the poem, you can hear the different rhythms in the poem you can hear how a poem changes tone how it can go from being soft to being loud. The poem includes cadence but that isn’t because of the iambic in the poem, we do know the poem is iambic but that’s not the cause of the tone. This time the cause of the tone was because of the inclines and the declines in the poem “I sing the body electric”, I mean the poem is exactly as what the title says it makes you feel electric it makes you feel the tone and musical when reading the poem out loud. It’s scary how the poem makes you feel. Luis Alberto poem “we are all Whitman #2” is telling us how our identity is, “Hispanic, Latin, Blond, black… This self is Puerto Rican, Chicano.”

Luis Alberto Ambrioggo’s poem translates the rhythmic of body parts with Walt Whitman because both poems include rhythm and include inclines and declines. Down below are two videos that I watched where 3 poets were reading a poem, one poet read the poem in Spanish, another poet read the poem in English and the last poet read the poem in Persian while they were reading the poem you were able to hear the different rhythms and different tones, because it wasn’t in the same language this is called translation in the second video a person asked “When you’re translating a poem does it make you feel different?”. Even so no matter what language the poem is read, In class I learned that whoever is reading the poem it will still make you feel the same the same tone the only difference will either be the language or the voice but you’ll always get the same Cadence the poem includes because the words don’t change the only thing that changes is the sound. Just like both the poems from Luis and Whitman, you were able to hear the same cadence you were able to hear either the tone going up or the tone smoothing down. The poem from Luis Alberto translate the rhythmic enumeration of body parts in Walts poem because they Both make you feel electric when reading both poems you’ll feel out of breath and sometimes lost but that is because both of the poems have a pattern and a rhythm they either have a tone that starts rising up and then have a tone that starts rising down but when reading the poem out loud you’ll notice when the poem hits you the most because you’ll feel like your yelling or giving a lecture and both poem include a cadence and they both make you feel electric. Just like the poet said in the video she believed that translating a poem is reaching out the world and that’s exactly what Luis poem and Whitman’s poem did, they gave us these poems so we can be able to translate it with our voice.

– Ana Munos

Get Through It

Get Through It (Lyrics)

By Diane Tarabay

About to tell you something I don’t know where to begin 

been silent all my life and I’m just tired of holding in 

you don’t see my bruises you don’t see the pain with in 

all you know is how to judge the color of my skin 

See I don’t wanna be here I didn’t want to leave my home 

running through the desert was afraid and all alone 

see let me tell you something 

let me tell you loud and clear 

I’m done with all this bullshit  I no longer want to fear

left my family behind 

their everything that I had 

ma look into my eyes I don’t wanna see you sad 

this is how life goes 

this is how life always goes 

people come and go and their hate always seems to grow 

This a story bout my pain this a story about my

struggle I didn’t come here on a plane I came here

through a smuggle 

what’d you f**kin do?

tell me what’d f**kin do?

I was only 9 years old and I didn’t have a clue 

mama why you crying mama? 

why you always crying? 

I know I’m only 9 years old 

but I know when you are lying 

(2×)I’m just trying to help you out

I’m just trying to make things better 

always be here for you when you feel under the weather 

I have to find a better life 

how do I do it?

I heard about the desert I think I can get through it 

see this is why we do it

Review:

Dear Mr. Zamora,

After reading and hearing your performance of the poem, “To President-Elect”, I was reminded why I have a love for poetry. The emotion that you put into that poem was astonishing. I could feel the frustration radiating from each line and the words you used were extremely vivid to the point in which I felt like I was that nine-year old. Your poem was short and simple and I think that’s the best way to tell a story. There was no rhyme or any deeper thoughts that had to be over analyzed. It was simply a story about the struggle that many illegal immigrants have to experience in order to come to the United States. 

Your poem inspired me to write something of my own. I imitated your poem through a rap song because I knew it would be the best medium to attract a contemporary audience. I completely changed most of the form of your poem but I made sure to maintain the same tone, theme, vivid language and freestyle. Your poem consisted of 16 short lines yet it perfectly captured a whole experience. I felt that I wanted to expand more on the topic of your poem. My main focus was to humanize the illegal immigrant story. 

The rap song is addressed to people who discriminate against illegal immigrants. I want them to understand the reasons why many decide to face the dangers of crossing through a desert inorder to arrive to the “land of opportunity”. Just like in your poem, I talk about crossing through a dessert all alone. I knew that writing my rap song for others to read would not suffice so I performed it through a recording. Through my performance, you can hear the tone that I want my audience to feel. I was able to express those feelings of frustration and anger. The first four lines of the rap song end with words that rhyme. I did this on purpose in order to make it sound poetic. There are many instances throughout the rap in which I do the same thing. I also repeat certain lines in order to underline key point that I want to make clear to my audience. 

Writing this rap song was not an easy thing. I had to keep the beat in mind in order for the song to flow. I tried to not go too overboard with the rhyming but I got carried away in some sections. Thankfully, It all came together in the end. My goal was to express the anger and frustration that illegal immigrants experience due to situations that they have to encounter like crossing desserts to come to a country that discriminates against them. I hope that you enjoyed my recreation of your poem.

Sincerely,

Diane Tarabay

Despair

Vinnie Kim

There is a dark feeling that builds up in your stomach when you know you have to work for a long time. It’s a painful, heart wrenching ugh and it (I guarantee) will ruin your day. Although, for me it was only knowing I had to work an 8 hour shift or something but imagine knowing you were bound to work the same, exhausting job every single day for the rest of your life. That feeling of despair is clearly depicted in McKay’s poems, “Outcast” and “The Tired Worker.”

Both poems have very different tones to them. “Outcast” almost feels like the speaker is looking in the mirror, trying to motivate himself to go to work/keep on living day by day. “And I must walk the way of life a ghost.” He MUST go on living, no matter how hard it gets. Although he is worn down and has been abused, he still must go on living. The speaker explains that yes he is worn down, yes he is a victim to something that he cannot control, yes he is a slave in a free world, but he keeps on going. He sees his life as valuable and something worth working for, he sees life as something to be cherished. Yet, even though he cherishes his life like so, he knows deep down that he will never be free. “For I was born, far from my native clime, Under the white man’s menace, out of time.”

“The Tired Worker” is a more energetic poem. The speaker is almost giving a war speech to a group of people that are in hiding. “Peace, O my rebel heart! for soon the moon From out its misty veil comes aloft!” This is a really interesting quote because it makes it seem like the speaker is ready to strike. But alas, he is not waiting for the night to strike, he is waiting for the night to rest from a long day at work. The speaker is almost making it seem like let us work so that we can rest which seems pointless but that’s the point. The speaker knows how hard life is but there’s nothing to do about it in the speaker’s eyes. The speaker is offering motivation by glamorizing the rest that comes with the night.

Both poems depict workers struggling to find methods to try and cope with the heavy burden of working every day for the rest of their days. That sense of disparity must have been so heartbreaking and overwhelming for those that lived in these times. These poems offered me a sense of motivation to strive to be the best student I can be so I can succeed later in my life and not have to work back breaking jobs.

Brat

Vinnie Kim

William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” has a very sarcastic tone to it. Shakespeare has some of the most beautiful lines/phrases of all time but this sonnet has an almost annoyed tone to it. “Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;” The speaker almost looks down on his lover in a harsh way.

Catherine Tate does a wonderful job reciting the poem back to the teacher. Although it was a comedic skit and it was all a joke, the tone was spot on. Shakespeare intended for the sonnet to be recited in a demeaning, conceited way. Tate was sarcastic and full of emotion, and as the audience we were left just as surprised as the teacher, David Tennant. The sonnet was meant to have that umph feeling to it, and Tate delivered it flawlessly.

SPECIAL

Diane Tarabay-Rodriguez 

William Shakespeare’s sonnet,”My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”is a poem that focuses on the idea of female beauty in a completely different perspective. It contains a similar theme to other traditional sonnets-Female Beauty-but it goes about it in a realistic way. This sonnet contains fourteen lines that are composed of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The poem is dominated by an iambic pentameter, and many of the lines are not punctuated, which allows the rhyme to flow smoothly. There are three types of literary devices that work towards enhancing the sound of the poem There is the use of alliteration when words of the same consonants get close together in lines. For example: (1 My, mistress/ 4 wires, black wires/ 9 hear, her/ 11 grant, goddess go). The sonnet contains assonance throughout most of the poem. This happens when words with same/similar vowels are near each other in lines. For example, (1 My, eyes, like/ 4 hairs, hers/ 6 see, cheeks/ 10 that, hath). The repetition in the sonnet places special emphasis on the repeated words and phrases.

When viewing the skit performed by Catherine Tate, we instantly get annoyed by Tate’s character because she is obnoxious. She continues to interrupt the teacher to the point where she makes him explode in anger. He tells her that she will never be as genus and brilliant as Shakespeare. Towards the end, she begins to recite Shakespeare sonnet off the top of her head. She blurs it out in a very fast pace that is difficult to understand with a tone of anger. The reason she recites it in that way is because she is only trying to prove to the teacher that she knows the poem and that she needs no further explanation of it. It came to my understanding that the meaning of Shakespeare sonnet was poorly transformed by Tate’s classroom performance and not enhanced in anyway because I could barely understand what she was saying. After going more in depth between the poem and the skit, I came to the conclusion that the theme of the poem and the way it is performed had a similarity. For example, Shakespeare’s poem talked about how his mistress isn’t anything unique. He states, “My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare” (12-13). This shows that the poet does not consider his lover as ideally beautiful yet he still loves her. She might seem like any other ordinary women but to him she is special. Tate makes the poem seem meaningless by the way she performs it but THAT sonnet is just like the mistress in the poem, special.

Like A Mirror Image

By Randy Hernandez

The sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” (Sonnet 130) by William Shakespeare’s main focus in the sonnet is on the mysteries women Shakesphere has shown in many of his works. In this poem Skakcesphere doesn’t praise the woman he shows the reader how the women beauty is nothing special. In other words, her appearance is unattractive as the speaker shows the women can’t be compared to the beauty of nature or of a goddess. This is shown in the title and in the first line as it states “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” the woman’s eyes aren’t comparable to sun as to show the idea of the woman’s eyes being dull which doesn’t catch a person’s attention. The speaker is being brutally honest with his comparison as to enforce this idea of the woman being an ordinary human being. She holds no physical appearance that one might find impressive or attractive too. The speaker also shows how unbothered he is to speaker ill of this woman as he states “Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks”. The speaker shows no sense of holding back from describing the woman in is such a negative aspect. The meaning of the poem is enhanced by Catherine Tate’s classroom performance as it implies the harsh, rude, parody, and dull aspects of the poem but leaves a bittersweet taste to the reader.

When reading the sonnet and seeing the video you can see how they both have a relationship with one another. Tate’s plays the role of a student named Lauren Cooper who is a personified version of this sonnet. The students actions display the same interpretation one gets when reading Shakespeare’s sonnet. This expression of both being a parody is shown as love is turned upside down in the sonnet as the speaker describes the women in a harsh way but at the end says she is as significant as any other women. Then Tate’s performance in the video is also a parody as she mocks, ridiculous and disrespects the english teacher which is played by David Tennant. When in most cases one holds their teacher to level of respect. Then one notices how Shakespeare’s sonnet and Tate’s performance have this impression of both to be rude, harsh, and very dull. This is shown as Tate’s role of the school student who is taken to be a girl who is only trouble, rude, vulgar and just not intelligent. This results in the teacher to respond to the student in a very unprofessional manner as he insults Lauren Cooper. Then the volta appears in the video as the student recites the poem “My Mistress’s Eyes are nothing like the sun” by Shakespeare as to show she is a very sharp girl who is capable of having inner beauty. This then helps enhance the sonnet as it also has the same effect as the women is shown to hold no beauty but after we reader the volta in the sonnet we see the beauty she holds. Then it is also shown in the couplet of the sonnet as it is presenting this ending of the women holding the same value as an other women even if she is not as appealing as other women. The performance by Tate is like a mirror image of  Shakespeare’s sonnet as it enhances the sonnet vulgar context but has an over all bittersweet ending as the two end with both women showing value.