Playwright Okuni ranges through Shakespeare\u2019s oeuvre for lesser-known snippets of dialogue, which he reshapes into sonnet-like stanzas of 11 or 12 lines. The poems play very loosely on classic Shakespearean themes, prominent among them being the travails and traps of (especially royal) power. \u201cMy Crown\u201d features lines from Henry VI, in which a furious Queen Margaret offers a paper crown to the pretender York before killing him, and concludes with Falstaff\u2019s jibe, \u201cand this cushion my crown,\u201d mocking all such foolish headgear and pretense. \u201cBrutish\u201d cites Richard II and Coriolanus on the insincere cant, accretion of sycophants and henchmen, and lack of integrity that attach themselves to power. \u201cProclamation\u201d invokes various Henrys\u00a0to skewer the theatricality and empty promises of demagogues. (\u201cAll the realm shall be in common. All things shall be in common. There shall be no money.\u201d) \u201cThis is and is not\u201d reprises Shakespeare\u2019s fascination with false fronts and illusions, while \u201cHow Like a Dream\u201d explores his notion of life as a series of actors\u2019 roles. Echoing Lear\u2019s plaint\u2014\u201cWho is it that can tell me who I am?\u201d\u2014\u201cThis Abruption\u201d ponders the confusion about identity and purpose that bedevils us. And the title poem\u2014taken from a line accusing Coriolanus of shredding his oath as contemptuously as he would a ragged piece of cloth\u2014warns of the indeterminacy and treachery of language and memory. (Okuni emphasizes this message by including versions of the poem in Arabic and Japanese, repeating the English version verbatim two pages later.)<\/p>\n
The writing in these poems is excellent since so much of it is cribbed from Shakespeare\u2019s rich, chewy dialogue, as in \u201cBeware My Follower,\u201d a lugubrious medley of lines, mainly from Macbeth and Lear\u2014\u201cCroak not, black angel, I have no food\u201d\u2014on death, hunger, wounds, and spookery. Okuni\u2019s project is to arrange the lines to tease out\u2014or at least obscurely hint at\u2014patterns and cryptic meanings. But meaning is frequently a secondary concern to the sheer aural effect of Shakespeare\u2019s verse; indeed, \u201cKerelybonto\u201d consists entirely of the nonsense language\u2014\u201cThroca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo\u201d\u2014that Shakespeare invented for All\u2019s Well that Ends Well. Okuni\u2019s arrangements emphasize the rhythm, repetition, and resonance in Shakespearean lines, blenderized down, in some cases, to commonplace phrases and words. The surprising result is poetry whose hypnotic incantations supersede its sense, giving it a high-modernist feel that brings to mind the work of Gertrude Stein, as in the contradictory cadences on the enigma of the self in \u201cI Am Hers I Am His.\u201d (\u201cI am hers. I am his. I am hurt. I am I. \/ I am in this. I am in this earthly world. \/ I am in this forest. I am in tune. I am left out. \/ I am light and heavy. I am like you they say. I am lost. \/ I am mad. I am meek and gentle. I am merry\u2026.I am not mad. I am not merry. \/ I am not of many words. I am not old. I am not sick.\u201d) The Bard would have been impressed. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Playwright Okuni ranges through Shakespeare\u2019s oeuvre for lesser-known snippets of dialogue, which he reshapes into sonnet-like stanzas of 11 or 12 lines. The poems play very loosely on classic Shakespearean themes, prominent among them being the travails and traps of (especially royal) power. \u201cMy Crown\u201d features lines from Henry VI, in which a furious Queen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5717,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}