There’s something about translating Shakespeare that is either really excruciating or really liberating. This was one of those liberating ones. I love Shakespeare’s [My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun]. (Silly Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson not giving names to their poems so we have to refer to them by the first line…)
Anyway, I love the poem because in it, Shakespeare broke the normal convention of praising his love as some goddess who had eyes like the sun, skin like snow, and hair like silk. He was keeping it real! Anyway, I decided to do a modern rewrite of this poem that was partially inspired by Harryette Mullen’s Dim Lady. I kept my version a little truer to the form, but not entirely since I didn’t feel like writing in iambic pentameter or using a rhyme scheme. Yeah… I’m a lazy poet. Leave me alone. Hope you like it. 🙂
