So . . . How're the sonnets working for you?

[KevinW]

So, did you all enjoy the sonnets? What with all the discussions on the what, somehow we forgot to ask if we even liked those things.

Oh, and be sure to drop a reason, too. Be honest. I'm sure Ms. Boyd won't fail you, make your life miserable, or beat the crap out of you for disliking history's most famous writer

Yep, she's too nice for that.


My Opinion on sonnets thus far:
5/10
The Pros:
+ Deep meanings, I enjoy plot twists as much as I enjoy deep meanings. "Oooh so glass actually means mirror?! Who would've thought!"
+ Old English is pretty bloody awesome.
+ It all wraps together very, very nicely the worst abominations are those without its head, body, or tail.

The Cons:
- No plot
- No real character
- No action
- No rising action
- No real conclusion
- Too short
- Hard to say out loud (tongue twisters, anyone?)
- Has a very strict structure of 14 lines, 3 quatrains, 1 couplet with rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG
- Is written by Shakespeare*
- Is homework assignment**




*Joke
**Also joke.

How would you rate all the sonnets you've read so far? Any of them "touching" for you? Because I'm dying, choking on my own spit, and clawing out my eyes at all the lovey dovey wovey cheesy . . . crap.

[ExtremelyExtremeExtremist]

I rate sonnets as C (little bit below average)
Reasons:

Pros:
Gives deep lessons
Helps analyzing difficult texts
Gives some clue what people of ancient times liked

Cons:
Boring
Hard to analyze each line
Don¡¯t want to read
Annoyance of old English
Getting angry when the actual meaning is different from what you thought
Unacceptable theme (Shakespeare¡¯s addiction to love)

I didn¡¯t enjoy reading sonnets, mostly because they were boring and were assignments. Sonnets don¡¯t touch me much because it is hard to understand what they¡¯re saying and the lessons they carry are obvious.

[yeajinchoi]

I think they were okay. maybe a 6/10? I enjoyed the "deep meanings" like you said or the metaphors he used to describe certain objects. But it was hard since I couldn't recognize them very well. Haha ironic.
I like how Shakespeare described the solutions in the start and then eventually LEAD to a conclusion to his problems as if he had just realized the solution as he was writing the poem.
I didn't really like it because I didn't like how his lover kept changing every poem. His love is strong but short. If you get what I mean.
Overall, it was understandable and it would good examples to look at if you want to write a classic love poem

[esther]

Shakespeare's sonnets were very hard to understand because of his hard vocab and grammar. but when you read it over and over, you get to understand it little by little, so i think that was the fun part of it. The pros are that they had deep meanings and it made me to think alot about him. the cons are that it was very hard to understand and i think it's just stupid to work on sonnets.... haha

[woojongpark]

Although it is very difficult for me to evaluate Shakespeare's sonnets by points, I will list my opinions:

-Like what Kevin said, sonnets have deep meanings. I especially liked #22, since the words in there twisted around and hid the theme very well.

-I know that many sonnets are hard to interpret, but I find them challenging. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment whenever I decipher a stanza. They are just like math problems, which you have to read them over and over again to understand, break down the problem into pieces and find the missing puzzle piece.

-Not only sonnets are hard to interpret, they are also hard to read. There are so many old vocab words in sonnets. But I think those are unique characteristics of sonnets. Also, the rhymes in sonnets are very pleasing to read.

[lukejoo1092]

I respect the fact that he was trying to express his love for his lover (or at least I hope that was the situation). The choices of words he used were really romantic and they flowed in such a smooth manner. But yeah, I had a hard time understanding the sonnet thoroughly. I got the ending totally wrong! It's really hard to tell what he was trying to say because the sonnets can be interpreted in so many ways. All I want to know is the true reason why he wrote each of the sonnets. It does help reading others analyses to understand the poem but that means I only understand it a bit more in a different way. I'm really curious of what the real meanings are but it looks like I'll never know.

[linnie]

My sonnet was seriously hard. It was sonnet 20.
My rate for my sonnet is D!!! Which is like 50.
Stephen and I came up with numerous themes; there were mother nature, sex, homosexuality, perfect woman and so on. It actually took us like a week to fully understand the poem, with Kevin's help. We searched for the theme, most of the website said it is about homosexuality, as I suggested and most of my classmates teased me because of this.
Anyway pros are:
- Interesting theme! I never thought it would be about homosexuality.
- It was actually hard sonnet which helped me to increase my analyze skill.
- There were so many themes that we could argue. (Stephen, I and Woojung were actually debating in the class until Ms. Boyd stopped us.)

Cons are:
- No story line
- No major character
- It was too hard.
- So many themes that we could argue.
- The topic didn't really interested me.

So these were my ratings and I don't suggest anyone to read this sonnet. Read sonnet 18. It is way better. Or other sonnets other than this. It is just not for me.

[jungholee]

I think it's great. I like the sonnets. Of course I'm getting hard time to understanding them, and taking much time. But whatever. I thought i understand well about poems and other deep meaning like symbols in books. So I think I know why people called language to art, and beauty of language. I couldn't feel something by the sonnet when i see it first. But when i keep reading it, and understand, I thought the connection, and word choice is beautiful. It's really deep, but when i read again, i can find new meaning again and again. It was hard to understand, but I think sonnet has the valuation of the hard time.

[dwsuh1]

I would actully rate sonnet as 8/10 i guess little bit above average.
So pros:
-very interesting way of saying things like you pointed out glasses are mirrors
-How Shakespear talks about his loves that make me imagine the situation he was in (excluding sonnet 20 don't want to imagine the scene)
-Have interesting way of putting story introduces problem goes to examples and boom right away goes to conclusion.
And Cons:
-Old english makes the sonnet hard to understand
-The example confuses me to lead to wrong theme
-there is not really clear reason how or why the problem was sloved

[sergeyfen]

I would rate sonnet 19 as 8/10 it was hard to understand but some words there were pretty obvious so it helped to understand it easier, but still it gave so much of hard times. It really shows sincere side of a writer and what he feels about his lover.
It has lot of meanings in what he says and meaning was very sharp and kind of touchy i guess.
It wasnt really bad to read it, its just hard time of understanding the meanings and old english

[jisu25]

If i am going to rate Shakesphere sonnets then it would be 7/10 because i have to say that it is indeed amazing about the part that he uses words in a very unique way also it is very interesting. However i do not like the part that he uses many words with multiple definition.

[brandonina]

Well, I agree with you Kevin. 5/10. Shakespeare is a genius but such a jerk at the same time. jkjk
If you fully get what Shakespeare writes about in his Sonnets, it's a great achievement for you.
If you don't, looking up the google isn't a pleasant feeling.
It's a great experience to learn different ways of writing something and Shakespeare's poetic languages are truly heart-striking. It's a little stressful, though, to understand it. This is the main problem that we face but when you read it in a easier language, there's a deep and valuable lesson that he tells us.

[sazad100]

I don' know what to rate Shakespeare's sonnet as. I don't get what he says in his sonnets most of the time. So i wouldn't give him a good rating to be honest because i don't get what he says and i need to look it up somewhere or take other people's opinion on what they understood. The language is really hard to understand but some phrases or words actually give clues about what the poem is really about.

[|Ruchira|]

hi

[elisalee]

It was a good experience to learn how to write a sonnet. Even it it was hard to follow all the rules and think of the ideas, it was pretty good