Frog Haiku by Matsuo Basho as a sonnet by Alfred H. Marks

FROG SONNET
by Alfred H. Marks
after the Frog Haiku by Matsuo Basho

A frog who would a-water-sounding go
Into some obscure algae-covered pool
Had best be sure no poetasting fool
Is waiting in the weeds and, to his woe,
Commemorates his pluck so all will know
His name and lineage, not for the fine school
He learned to sing at, nor, to make men drool
The flavor of his leg from thigh to toe.
He will not for his mother be remembered,
Nor for his father’s deeds, his honor bright,
Nor for his brother’s leg dismembered,
And eaten by a king with rare delight.
He will be famous simply for the sorta
Noise he makes just when he hits the water.

IMAGE: “Frog Hamlet” by Dallin Orr, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Visit the artist at dallinorr.wordpress.com.

Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

It’s still April — and it’s still National Poetry Month in the United States. The American Academy of Poets has developed a list of 30 ways to celebrate. One of the suggestions is to memorize a poem. Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare is a perfect candidate — because it’s “short…with a strong rhythmic underpinning” as the National Poetry Month site suggests.

SONNET 18
by William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

NOTE: “Sonnet 18” and other summer-related poetry and prose from over 70 authors appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology, available at Amazon.com.

IMAGE: 2014 National Poetry Month poster by Chip Kidd.