This week on Next Line, Please, we were delighted to see so many strong entries from Dr. Lehman's Hamlet-centric prompt. Not only did writers incorporate the richness of Shakespeare's characters, but a zeugma, which we learned last week is a rhetorical figure in which one verb governs two nouns from different paradigms.
Harkening back to our first prompt ever, a sonnet, took the place of this week's first winner:
“Elsinore” by Justin Knapp
Hamlet’s spirit haunts me seeking answers.
He walks the chilly battlements at night,
And speaks of our father’s spectral cancer.
Both poisoned: one ear, one past made unright.
He poses all the questions without key,
Of the play, outside the play, in the play.
Tell me: madness or just pretense to be?
Was it doubt or revenge’s hand at bay?
Heart clenched, more in sorrow than in anger,
He asks about Ophelia’s mermaid death.
Tell me: fate or free will, lithe or languor?
Was it mishap or madness’s last breath?
His essence always fades when I observe:
If all was known, what purpose would life serve?
Followed by a ground-shaking quake of images and sounds:
“A hawk from a handsaw” by Morgan Frank
The truth is that either one can
cut the flesh and rip in jagged
precision. Each one can depend
on a hand extended: the falconer’s
falling glove, the worker’s callous.
The truth is in the job, not the wound.
For to the manner born, the reach
knows its risk. You can keep
them both in the shed behind the house,
feed one and oil the other.
That which in you that was cut
from flight, that which severed.
Following this poem are five other marvelous poems, which you can find on American Scholar's page, along with next week's prompt! Tune in, write, and enter your candidate!
--Virginia Valenzuela
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