Imitation Response - Grade: A PDF

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Emily Gorski Imitation/Response Assignment Response to Sonnet 73 For my Imitation/Response assignment, I chose to write a response to William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 73.” My poem, written in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet, mimics “Sonnet 73”s meter, rhyme scheme, and line count, or all of the elements that make it a sonnet. However, my response also incorporates other aspects unique to Sonnet 73, such as the blatant symbols of season, night, and fire, and the dramatic monologue style in which the original sonnet was crafted. “Sonnet 73,” as are all of Shakespeare’s sonnets, is comprised of fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. This indicates that each line contains ten syllables, five sets of two syllables each, following a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. For example, if one were to read aloud the first line of “Sonnet 73,” “That time of year thou may’st in me behold,” (1), it is quite easy to distinguish and recognize the rhythm of the 5 sets of iambic syllables. The pattern continues throughout the poem, creating a fluid rhythm that makes the lines easy to read and cultivating a flow between ideas. The lines of my poem, “Response to Sonnet 73,” produce the same effect, as they are written in iambic pentameter as well. In the same manner, the rhyme scheme of my poem mimics that of “Sonnet 73,” and follows a pattern of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The very specific rhyme scheme works with the iambic pentameter to maintain coherence and flow throughout the poem, and helps to organize the ideas of the poem into three quatrains and an ending couplet, indicated by the rhyme scheme of each stanza. In example, the lines of the first stanza end with the words “behold,” “hang,” “cold,” and “sang,” in that order. The lines of the first stanza in my poem end with, respectively, “Spring,” “bloom,” “sing,” and “room.”

Emily Gorski Imitation/Response Assignment Response to Sonnet 73 Perhaps the most important element of “Sonnet 73” is the prominent use of symbols that is present throughout the verse. The first stanza uses vivid imagery to convey the transition from autumn to winter. Shakespeare writes, “Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang” (3-4), when describing the branches of trees, fabricating a direct comparison to something once full of life, as the speaker of the poem also used to be. The next symbol comes when the speaker compares himself to the twilight of a day, “which by-and-by black night doth take away, Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest” (7-8). Here the reader sees a direct correlation being made between death and sleep, an effort made by the speaker to comfort his audience. In the third quatrain, the speaker identifies himself as a dying fire, “As the death-bed whereon it must expire consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by”(11-12). This symbol, and the others in the poem, creates a continuous imaginary environment in which the speaker is encompassed in and connected with various, clear images that stand for death and passing on. While illustrating this message of finality to the audience, the speaker also uses the symbols to comfort the person to whom he is speaking. In my sonnet, “Response to Sonnet 73,” I included symbols much like those in the original, but this time they came from the audience of the original poem, and were directed toward “Sonnet 73”s speaker. Lines such as “Birds crowding leafy balconies to sing” (3), “but I, your stars, mimic your guiding glow” (6), and “but leaves behind a haze that hangs in air to wrap me up in clouds of ash and grey” (10-11), serve as symbols that respond to those introduced in “Sonnet 73,” and portray the speaker’s ability to cope with and understand the dying state of the audience. This tactic creates a conversation between

Emily Gorski Imitation/Response Assignment Response to Sonnet 73 the two pieces, and this use of similar symbols is what qualifies my poem as a response to the original....