Shakespeare, Mullen, & Berrigan

The first of the poets was William Shakespeare. In Sonnet number 128 I wondered if there was any connection from the line “Do I envy those jacks, that nimble leap” to the nursery rhyme that says “Jack be nimble Jack be quick…”I also definitely noticed a connection between Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130 and the second poet, Mullen’s, first poem entitled Dim Lady. I really liked Shakespeare’s two lines in sonnet number 116 where he wrote, “Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.” Shakespeare can be difficult to read because the language is so different, but his work is beautiful.

The second poet was Mullen. The poem Dream Cycle in itself seemed cyclic. It began and ended with similar lines: “The ice cream truck goes by again” and “when the ice cream truck goes lullaby again”. My favorite lines were, “It could freeze my teeth crystallize a sigh,” because it’s interesting to think about crystallizing a sigh. Of the three total poets, I found Mullen’s to be the easiest to read although I like Shakespeare’s work best. As far as Dim Lady being related to Shakespeare’s sonnet number 130 I definitely think it is and I think the line “I have seen tablecloths in Shakey’s Pizza Parlors,” to be a reference to Shakespeare.

Ted Berrigan was the last of the three poets. I found that his use of capitalization and names really made his poetry really hard for me to read. The first poem altogether just left me confused. The second poem I really noticed his use of repetition of specific words (it’s hard not to notice that). The third poem, again I was confused with his capitalization. In this case he capitalized the word Babies. His poem LIII and LV have a connection in the use of “massive as Anne’s thighs” in both. Poem LV ended with a line that I really liked which was linked to the first line, “To the grace of the make-believe bed”. Berrigan started this poem off with a line from Frank O’Hara which is also nicely worded, “Grace to be born and live as variously as possible”.