Photo: Beasley – (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Facebook Quidditch

The land and sea and rivers violent quake
Unearthly scream of wind through stormy pitch
Into the darkness did the preacher spake
To steer a broomstick fast in play quidditch
What then dementors rise to cause a fall
Disrupt the player take the course to ground
Gather friends and house-mates with sudden call
Evaporate the bone with spell in sound
Language negative lofty demons fun
ConflagrationBook much less than a face
Racing screams through keyboard quick singe and run
Move on, move on, dehuman and retrace
Reset, rebuild, reload to fire again
Ice cold unfriendly ear into the plan

What the heck?

While all sonnets are about drawing a comparison between two generally unrelated things, what makes this a Shakespearean sonnet is the structure.

It’s written in iambic pentameter, consists of 3 alternating rhyming quatrains, and ends with a couplet. It also has a volta where the subject shifts from one thing to another near the end.

The rhyme scheme is:

• A
• B
• A
• B
• C
• D
• C
• D
• E
• F
• E
• F
• G
• G

I found this to be surprisingly difficult to write (the shoe-horn and creativity are at odds I suppose).

And now you have something to talk about the next time the conversation lags.