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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847778536 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2011 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 152 |
| File size: | 537 KB |
About the Author
Philip Terry is a writer, a poet, and a director of creative writing at Essex University. He is the author of Fables of Aesop, Oulipoems, and Ovid Metamorphosed.
Read an Excerpt
Shakespeare's Sonnets
By Philip Terry
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2010 Philip TerryAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-853-6
CHAPTER 1
1
I
Clone Kylie
That thereby beauty's rosin might never die,
As the ripper's memory fades
In Portman Road.
The contract for her eyes
Falls through
Making a famine where abundance lies.
So lucky in love.
Wembley's nymph,
Herald to the pink iPod,
Withnail and I without content.
Tender churl
Pity this glutton
To eat the grave and thee.
II
We desire increase from hedge funds
That Ruby's toes might never drop,
But his hair bare his memory,
As ripe cheese.
But thou (contracted to Middle Earth)
Feed'st thy flight's male with kneecapped fowl,
Making a famine where Adebayor lives,
Thyself cruel to elves.
Thou that art
Harold to the spring,
Buriest thy corn dolly within thine own beard,
And mak'st waste in noggin.
Putty the world.
2
When fishmongers attack
And dig deep trenches,
Who's the ice cream for?
I live in London,
Do you mind if I open the window?
The day before yesterday,
At dawn,
Cutlery, a cucumber, dental floss.
We haven't decided yet,
How much is the 24-hour service?
I'm a teacher, and you?
There's nobody there.
Can you hear me?
I can't hear you, could you repeat that?
2
When forty splinters besiege thy prow,
Put a bench by the rhododendrons,
And knock down
The outside lavatory.
Ask'd where thy clackers lie,
To say,
within thy deep-sunken eyes,
Were shame.
If thou couldst answer
'This American Express card
Shall access my account,
What's in your wallet?'
This were to be Asterix when thou art Obelix.
3
Leak in the grass and tell the fence thou viewest,
Why you erect no trellis
To posterity,
But, like Buggles, undress barren mothers.
What fit tart wouldn't
Spread 'em for your plough?
Where is Esso fondled but in tombs
Of austerity?
Shiny mirrors, arsehole,
Reflect the lonely Aprils of Primula,
Jet yoghurt through windows of gestalt seas,
Goose fleshed winkles and bent oysters.
You are curving like a question mark,
Herr Shingle, and your clams lie barren on the
strand.
4
This one's about wanking, he said,
Stepping on stage in a white lab coat,
Nietzsche's bequest means fuck all,
And being Frank, I am no superman.
Play the bar chords, niggard, abuse
The bounteous gift of The Ramones,
Press distortion,
So great a strum, yet cannot play live.
Stuck in traffic alone,
You're only kidding yourself.
Time for the encore,
What acceptable audition canst thou leave?
Thy unused beauty pipetted into dry ice
It ain't Coca Cola, it's rice.
5
Hours spent in front of the mirror
In Kingston-upon-Thames
Are wasted by the time you reach
Clapham.
Sumo wrestlers
Too hideous
Sit checked with frost their lust quite spent
In KFC.
Scent from Paris
In a distillate of glass
Evaporates like your wage cheque:
Because you're worth it.
6
Let summer's glossy feet
Poison Val Doonican
ere
That hose
ply the welling loom;
Hats to bead
your high spot,
Often the swamp took
Ben, what could Driff do
Leaving thee in pissed territory?
Be not
macheted.
7
Pissed in Curry India
I ordered Chicken Vindaloo,
Each under-eye drooping at the sight,
Served by surly hands, his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the hill of pilau rice
Resembling diced dogs' bollocks,
I took out my slide-rule,
For the rocky descent.
From highmost parch,
He reeleth from the day,
The eyes (fortuitously) now burnt out by Tennants,
From this slow track, look another way.
Traveller, thyself outgoing in the gloom,
Untennanted diest, unless thou get home soon.
9
You've got far more important things to
Worry about than carbon emissions,
When your arm is being chewed
Off by a rottweiler called Diesel –
You could lose up to 5 lb
In your first two minutes.
After being sectioned,
It pays to go surfing
With high-voltage former pole dancers:
Ask any microbiologist.
A boom dangles unpleasantly into view,
Like Robocop's flaccid tackle,
Futures at B&Q
Snapped up by World of Snooker.
9
In the Great Hall, Wilton.
PEMBROKE I shall never marry.
SHAKESPEARE Marry, why not?
PEMBROKE [Dreamily.] I love others too much.
SHAKESPEARE What sort of argument is that, my lord?
PEMBROKE [Playing with his moustache.] How could I forgive myself if I were to die, and leave my wife a widow?
SHAKESPEARE [Impatiently.] Whether or not you leave a widow, the world will mourn your death, my lord.
PEMBROKE You flatter me, Will.
SHAKESPEARE [Tentatively.] If you were to bless some woman's womb ...
EMBROKE Not that old chestnut, Will!
SHAKESPEARE ...then your widow could keep her husband's shape in mind!
PEMBROKE A horse, a horse, my estate for a horse! Exit PEMBROKE, galloping.]
13
O that you were yourself!
Since the advent of
poststructuralism
There are no people;
you should prepare
Find determination
again
your sweet form
so fair
honour
And rage
my love
say so.
14
By Posh Spice is my judgement fucked;
And yet, methinks, I have astronomy,
to tell
Of warts and colostomies
Johnny
Thunder,
Or
aught in heaven
from these tea bags drain;
Stars in their Eyes,
scratch cards
to
prognosticate,
The nation's wand.
15
'This is' 'in common opinion' 'borrowed'
'the stars' 'where everything lives' 'destroyed'
'the octave's two introductory words' 'the young man'
'beauty and lineage' 'everything that grows'
'the reassuring feudal hold-paradigm' 'con-sideration'
'and other sonnets' 'of cold self-inspection'
'in thrall to' 'princes' 'a broad one'
'the thesis' second voicing' 'fate's double-natured agency'
'the cat has got another bird' 'a bluetit this time'
'by ominous alliteration' 'narrowed in the sestet'
'such close pairs' 'violets and curls' 'men and plants'
'sheaves and beard' 'cat and bird'
'in a sidereal view' 'there is' 'no pathos'
'available' 'for the' 'individual' 'bluetit'.
15
When I consider
But a little
This huge stage
The stars in
Men as plants
Checked even by
Their youthful sap
Out of memory
The conceit of
Youth before my
Wasteful time debateth
To change your
Time for love
As he takes.
17
Who would not be sick at the thought of
Living on Stilton,
Though yet it swallows
Not Harry Potter.
If I could black out the image
Of your annual leave,
And all yoghurt,
The agents' fees would be
Deducted at source.
Never buy yellow wallpaper in Holborn,
Or secondhand amps in Stevenage,
Ron and Hermione are in on it.
Take my advice:
Your socks show your personality.
18
Shall I compare thee to a Smirnoff ad?
Thou art more shimmering, more full of zap;
Icy winds do freeze the Russian steppes,
And vodka's high hath all too short a date:
Sometime too cold the eye of Yeltsin shines,
And oft is his bleached complexion dimmed;
And every drunk through drunkenness declines,
By cancer of the liver or septicaemia untrimmed:
But thy eternal glimmer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that zip thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou sup in his shade
When in immortal lines like these thou glowest:
So long as men can drink and take a piss,
So long lives thine in this.
20
An eye more bright than theirs,
less false in rolling?
Falling asleep reading Derrida
is not as uncommon as you think;
It offers material proof
of the drift
of the signifier,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth not.
Shifting change,
false women's fashion,
Acquainted eye kicked out.
20
In a meadow.
SHAKESPEARE Your skin, Herb, is as smooth as a filly's, and I love thee for't.
PEMBROKE [Vexed.] Lay off, Will.
SHAKESPEARE And your heart is as gentle as a filly's, nay gentler, for it knows not shifting change.
PEMBROKE [As before.] Put a sock in it, Will.
SHAKESPEARE Nay, your eyes are brighter still than filly's, brighter by far, brighter than the stars, and less false in rolling!
PEMBROKE [Suddenly animated.] You forget one thing, Will.
SHAKESPEARE Your ears! They are like the dew-topp'd ...
PEMBROKE [He rises.] My cock.
22
My lip gloss shall not persuade me I am past it,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when I behold time's futtock shroud in thee
I will look bad breath in the eyes.
That beanbag that doth
Cramp thee
Is Roy Orbison's.
What do you mean eiderdown?
Be wary of seamstresses and Olivio,
As I, not for myself, but for Thelma.
I will keep thy heart in Chinese wax
As
nuthouse
Baader-Meinhof.
23
As an unperfect Chancellor on the television,
Who with his fatwah is put beside his part,
A shopkeeper from Birmingham
Lurking at about 8 or 9 degrees.
Lot 221 is a terrestrial globe
Running an enquiry into airmiles –
I love this pinkish tinge,
Which I think you're loving as well.
Should we create a slot for the VIP flight
Which is blocking the taxiway?
The journey has actually taken three hours –
The future of the cabinet hangs in the balance!
Wouldn't it be nice if you could make
Last night's dream today's reality?
24
As a train approached the railway station,
Gorgeously embellished with beads,
And air conditioning as standard,
He says that there are really two types of women –
It's not just their size, it's their shape.
For some reason they become unstable.
Who made the call?
Do you think love goes on forever?
Buried in the ice for 500 years,
If you think about upgrading your iron,
A ballet leg and a back-tuck somersault,
You should wait until the storm is over.
It's such a beautiful day,
I've been wondering ...
25
Let Joe Cole boast of having found the net,
We have one of the hottest cars on the road,
Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars,
And the huge scale of the conflict,
See Nicola on page 3 tomorrow
With her shapely pins wrapped in stylish black leggings,
Ideal for picking up cat hair,
Catching a train on the night she vanished.
Wireless speakers allow you to listen
To music anywhere in the house –
Midget thieves are zipped into sports bags,
Thanks to the game's impressive customisation.
'u cant always get wot u want.
but u shud always get wot u deserve.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Shakespeare's Sonnets by Philip Terry. Copyright © 2010 Philip Terry. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgement,
Dedication,
1 ('From fairest creatures we desire increase'),
2 ('When forty winters shall besiege thy brow'),
3 ('Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest'),
4 ('Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend'),
5 ('Those hours that with gentle work did frame'),
6 ('Then let not winter's ragged hand deface'),
7 ('Lo, in the orient when the gracious light'),
9 ('Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye'),
13 ('O that you were yourself! But, love, you are'),
14 ('Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck'),
15 ('When I consider every thing that grows'),
17 ('Who will believe my verse in time to come'),
18 ('Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?'),
20 ('A woman's face with nature's own hand painted'),
22 ('My glass shall not persuade me I am old'),
23 ('As an unperfect actor on the stage'),
24 ('Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled'),
25 ('Let those who are in favour with their stars'),
26 ('Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage'),
27 ('Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed'),
28 ('How can I then return in happy plight'),
30 ('When to the sessions of sweet silent thought'),
32 ('If thou survive my well-contented day'),
33 ('Full many a glorious morning have I seen'),
34 ('Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day'),
36 ('Let me confess that we two must be twain'),
37 ('As a decrepit father takes delight'),
38 ('How can my muse want subject to invent'),
39 ('O, how thy worth with manners may I sing'),
40 ('Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all'),
41 ('Those pretty wrongs that liberty commits'),
42 ('That thou hast her, it is not all my grief'),
44 ('If the dull substance of my flesh were thought'),
45 ('The other two, slight air and purging fire'),
46 ('Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war'),
48 ('How careful was I when I took my way'),
49 ('Against that time ? if ever that time come ?'),
50 ('How heavy do I journey on the way'),
51 ('Thus can my love excuse the slow offence'),
53 ('What is your substance, whereof are you made'),
54 ('O how much more doth beauty beauteous seem'),
55 ('Not marble nor the gilded monuments'),
56 ('Sweet love, renew thy force. Be it not said'),
57 ('Being your slave, what should I do but tend'),
59 ('If there be nothing new, but that which is'),
60 ('Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore'),
61 ('Is it thy will thy image should keep open'),
62 ('Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye'),
63 ('Against my love shall be as I am now'),
64 ('When I have seen by time's fell hand defaced'),
65 ('Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea'),
66 ('Tired with all these, for restful death I cry'),
67 ('Ah, wherefore with infection should he live'),
68 ('Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn'),
69 ('Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view'),
71 ('No longer mourn for me when I am dead'),
72 ('O, lest the world should task you to recite'),
74 ('But be contented when that fell arrest'),
75 ('So are you to my thoughts as food to life'),
77 ('Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear'),
78 ('So oft have I invoked thee for my muse'),
79 ('Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid'),
80 ('O, how I faint when I of you do write'),
81 ('Or I shall live your epitaph to make'),
82 ('I grant thou wert not married to my muse'),
83 ('I never saw that you did painting need'),
84 ('Who is it that says most which can say more'),
85 ('My tongue-tied muse in manners holds her still'),
86 ('Was it the proud full sail of his great verse'),
87 ('Farewell ? thou art too dear for my possessing'),
88 ('When thou shalt be disposed to set me light'),
89 ('Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault'),
90 ('Then hate me when thou wilt, if ever, now'),
91 ('Some glory in their birth, some in their skill'),
92 ('But do thy worst to steal thyself away'),
94 ('They that have power to hurt and will do none'),
95 ('How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame'),
96 ('Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness'),
97 ('How like a winter hath my absence been'),
98 ('From you have I been absent in the spring'),
99 ('The forward violet thus did I chide'),
100 ('Where art thou, muse, that thou forget'st so long'),
101 ('O truant muse, what shall be thy amends'),
102 ('My love is strengthened, though more weak in seeming'),
103 ('Alack, what poverty my muse brings forth'),
106 ('When in the chronicle of wasted time'),
107 ('Not mine own fears nor the prophetic soul'),
108 ('What's in the brain that ink may character'),
109 ('O never say that I was false of heart'),
110 ('Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there'),
112 ('Your love and pity doth th'impression fill'),
113 ('Since I left you mine eye is in my mind'),
115 ('Those lines that I before have writ do lie'),
116 ('Let me not to the marriage of true minds'),
117 ('Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all'),
120 ('That you were once unkind befriends me now'),
121 ("Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed'),
122 ('Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain'),
123 ('No, time, thou shalt not boast that I do change!'),
124 ('If my dear love were but the child of state'),
125 ('Were't aught to me I bore the canopy'),
126 ('O thou my lovely boy, who in thy power'),
127 ('In the old age black was not counted fair'),
128 ('How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st'),
129 ('Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame'),
130 ('My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'),
131 ('Thou art as tyrannous so as thou art'),
132 ('Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me ?'),
133 ('Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan'),
134 ('So, now I have confessed that he is thine'),
135 ('Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will'),
136 ('If thy soul check thee that I come so near'),
137 ('Thou blind fool love, what dost thou to mine eyes'),
139 ('O, call not me to justify the wrong'),
140 ('Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press'),
141 ('In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes'),
142 ('Love is my sin, and thy dear virtue hate'),
143 ('Lo, as a care-full housewife runs to catch'),
144 ('Two loves I have, of comfort and despair'),
145 ('Those lips that love's own hand did make'),
146 ('Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth'),
147 ('My love is as a fever, longing still'),
148 ('O me, what eyes hath love put in my head'),
149 ('Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not'),
150 ('O, from what power hast thou this powerful might'),
151 ('Love is too young to know what conscience is'),
152 ('In loving thee thou know'st I am foresworn'),
153 ('Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep'),
154 ('The little love-god lying once asleep'),
Afterword,
Index of First Lines,
Also by Philip Terry from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,