9/11/13 Blog Response 1

Shakespeare's sonnet 130 assaults his mistress in the beginning and then ends it by admitting his love for her flaws. He notices his woman's flaws but accepts them and does not let them bother him. He describes his mistress with a dark skin tone when he says, "If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun" but then ends the sonnet saying, "and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare." Shakespeare is insisting that not all women need to be beautiful to receive love and that love can be real without external beauty but rather internal.

Harryette Mullen's sonnet from Sleeping With the Dictionary, "Dim Lady" is similar to Shakespeare's because it is a modernized version of it. Both of the sonnets are written by men who have a strong love for women who do not fit societies standard definition of beauty. Mullen uses several different comparisons including peppers, Red Lobster, slinkys, and twinkies for his "lover" which is much more blunt and understandable then Shakespeare's sonnet. My favorite line he uses is at the very end Mullen states, "And yet, by gosh, my scrumptious Twinkie has as much sex appeal for me as any lanky model or platinum movie idol who's hyped beyond belief." I love the way Shakespeare and Mullen talk about their "unattractive" mistresses as gold medals in their eyes and how both sonnets have a playful tone.

Ted Berrigan's sonnet LIII is primarily about temptations and struggles that humans face. This sonnet specifically focuses on the temptations of sexual desires and how although humans know the consequence of sex they still choose to do so. The sonnet begins with "belly to hot belly we have laid" and then goes on to suggest that pregnancy is looked down upon as he writes, "Everyone's suddenly pregnant and no one is glad" and then ends the sonnet with a common human thought, "Fucking is so very lovely, Who can say no to it later?" Berrigan's sonnet is the epitome of human nature in the sense that we know the consequences yet we do not think deeply about them, we simply do what everyone else around us is doing and we do it carelessly.