Even Shakespeare
Zack Rogow
On some days even Shakespeare must have thought
There’s too much gore at Hamlet’s denouement,
or he regretted jokes crowds hadn’t bought
and Romeo’s ruffly speeches made him yawn.
Metaphysical grunts of Lear seemed trite
and Will wished his love in her plumed bonnet
would spread her knees without his having to write
yet another motley-minded sonnet.
Then he’d exit the Globe and slip away
mayhap in the midst of Act III or IV,
and follow Thames’ tide at close of day,
watching an egret at the nearer shore
suddenly take flight above the flood:
a white shadow blazing against the mud.
Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays. His eighth book of poems, Talking with the Radio: poems inspired by jazz and popular music, was published by Kattywompus Press. He is also writing a series of plays about authors, incorporating their writing into the action. The most recent of these, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 2015 and ran for five months at The Marsh in San Francisco and Berkeley in 2016. His blog, Advice for Writers, has 200 posts on topics of interest to writers. He currently teaches in the low-residency MFA in writing program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. You can find Zack online at www.zackrogow.com.