For Hire : Will Shakespeare

Times are tough for everybody.  The Globe has gone bankrupt, and the Bard of Avon is now trying to eek out a living doing freelance work.  In reality he’ll take whatever he can get – advertising copy, humor pieces, whatever works.  The only problem is that while his command of the language might technically be “modern”, it doesn’t “pop” for today’s audiences like it once did, so he’s having to find his voice all over again.

Sound interesting?  Such is the premise of the new blog Will for Hire, a new poetry experiment from Mike Southern.

If you’re serious about your Shakespeare, and only the master’s blank verse will do it for you, then you may not want to read on.  But if you like poetry in general and you don’t mind a bit of a laugh at dear Will’s expense, you get to find such gems as this ode to Hershey’s chocolate:

An ode to chocolates dark; I write this day
Of sweetness tinged with bitterness sublime,
Like life itself. You draw my hungry gaze.
Impassioned, overcome, I lust for you.
Despite your grams of fat – in number, twelve,
And of those, seven saturated are –
Yea, burdened though you be with sugared vice,
These you transcend; your soul is naught but health.

…

That is not complete, I didn’t want to snip too much of his content.

I’m not a big “poetry for poetry’s sake” guy, but I admire the creativity.  I’m sure there’ll be some folks here that get a real kick out of it.