Monkey See I’ve heard some learned people take the view A thousand monkeys at a thousand keys, With time and food and nothing else to do, Could hammer out to be or not to be. And what would you do if you had the time? Break down and buy that typewriter you saw And hammer out the rhythm and the rhyme To tell the world of what you hold in awe? And each time, just a word or letter wrong, The sound not right, the rhythm slightly false— Or someone else already wrote the song, And your small tune was his most famous waltz. If all the world has heard it all before, Then tell me who you write your verses for?
My notes: I very rarely write formal poetry, so it’s probably not a surprise that this was for a class. If my memory is right, it was one of my MFA classes on formal poetry, but… I don’t remember much more than that! It’s a sonnet, quite traditional, and although I don’t think formal poetry is my strength, I’m a bit fond of the ones I wrote in that class. It can be fun, to paraphrase Robert Frost, to put the net up every once in a while when you’re playing tennis.
