Twitter Poetry

I occasionally write a bit of twitter poetry- the aim of which is to start with a single image and construct a verse around it of 140 characters or less. I really enjoy doing this, more as a little mind exercise than anything else although I appreciate that some work better than others. Although it's easiest to write the poems in a twitter message (because then I can keep tabs on the pesky character number which spends more of its time red and with a minus next to it than I'd care to admit), I've decided to collect them here as well and will add to them as I write. These are all the ones I could find that I've written in the last nine months or so.

I'm always on the look out for new words as I find an external source makes for the most interesting constructions so if you'd like to please suggest a word (and I will have a go at pretty much any word), it would be really helpful to me!

Shimmering 23/10/15

Nightly the land lies

Besotted by an inky heat.

Above

A heavy moon

Dips towards water

To watch it shimmering-

And finds relief

Autumn 23/10/15

Joyous rage!

The earth atomwise

Becoming Icarus

In the flames.

Consumed

She falls

And stoops-

Reclaiming quietly

A smoky haze.

Bustle 23/10/15

At 8:50

The clouds charge by

Forgotten in the sky

By those beneath.

Until the rain

Reminds them

Of the blueness

In between.

Rust 23/10/15

Unfathomed strength

To bear unnatural load

She lists & bows.

Onward

Through tears

As flakes of burnished snow

cascade& drown

A Plate of Cherries 02/06/15

Shiny hearts

So gorgeous

In the sun-

I discarded stones

Let juices run.

But cooler now

I wait the fall

Perhaps they

Weren't sweet

After all.

Twilight in Winter

As breath rose

Through silhouetted branches

Like fingers

Entwined&

Reaching up

Toward an ink-spill sky,

We walked.

Untitled 05/01/15

I Long for Spring!

Apple-bright & clean

To brace my skin

Against the laughing air

And thrill-

Before the land

Turns honeyed,

Warming

Still.

Kindling 02/06/15

So brittle lies

The kindling

Stacked round their

leafy brethren

Awaiting

That first flicker

To bring themselves alive

A Thousand Splendid Suns- Khaled Hosseini

Each of our lives is governed by key moments, turning points, forks in the road down which our futures travel. The decisions, choices, and interactions we make scatter our experiences rendering us as individual and unique as the genetic codes in our cells. Perhaps it is because of this scattering that when experiences unify a community, a nation, the globe they become so much more potent. The 'where were you?' moments: the moon landing, the fall of the Berlin wall, September 11th 2001. I wasn't alive for the first one, and as the wall fell I was more interested in Sesame Street and getting as much liquidised food into my chubby cheeks as I could (I was not a particularly politically aware toddler). But I was 14 years old in 2001 and the memory of that day exists more clearly in my mind than many in the years since. So quickly Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and Afghanistan became buzzwords- shorthand for fear and terror.

There's no way for me write this in a way that isn't spectacularly trite but what astonishes me now is how little I still know about Afghanistan, what was going on before that fateful day, its history and the seemingly unending traumas the nation underwent (and continues to undergo). A Thousand Splendid Suns, written by the very talented Afghan-American Khaled Hosseini of The Kite Runner fame, has allowed me to explore in a very small way the turbulent past of the country. Of course, it is a novel and the characters themselves fictionalised. But the fall of Communist oppression, the hopeful transition to an Islamic nation state that gradually fell to the control to the Taliban highlights the unending tragedy that befell the nation in the latter portion of the 20th Century, represented through its central characters.

Hosseini centres his novel around the lives of two women, Mariam and Laila. Mariam, a harami (literally, 'forbidden'), is an illegitimate daughter of a moderately wealthy man with three wives. Although he only pays the minimal courtesy to her and her mother, Mariam adores him and her life enters a tumbling downward spiral when she is left disappointed on her birthday (a fact that comes back with a shuddering punch to the heart in the closing pages of the book) and runs away to find him. This of course makes it sound like her actions drive her fate when in fact, it is the societal powerlessness of both Mariam and Laila which drives so much of the narrative. Throughout the novel what Hosseini does so well and so brutally, is to illustrate repeatedly the inherent strength of these women despite the constraints in which they live. As Mariam is sent from the countryside to Kabul to marry,Rasheed, a much older man, who later also becomes Laila's husband we see a young woman with no option but to mould her existence around that of her husband's. The self-assurance with which Rasheed commands her is horrifying in its very matter-of-factness and Hosseini seems at pains to impress the commonplace attitude of control and subjugation on his readers.

This is not to say the male-female dynamics in the book are totally negative- far from it. Laila, who is a child when Mariam first moves to Kabul, has a warm relationship with her father and Hosseini's gentle handling of her friendship with her best friend Tariq creates a heart to a novel without which large portions of it would have been very bleak indeed. However, both Laila's father and Tariq are constructed as outsiders- her father, a quiet intellectual, is brow-beaten by his dominating (although terribly fragile) wife and Tariq has already been the victim of war- losing a leg to a landmine in his early childhood. They represent the good and the broken. What this means is when both of these men are gone and Laila falls into the power of Rasheed the 'status quo' seems that much more brutal.

And it is brutal. The horrifying ridiculousness of the Taliban declaration across Kabul which happens in the second half of the book is still fresh in my mind:

"...Singing is forbidden...Dancing is forbidden...If you keep parakeets, you will be beaten. Your birds will be killed" and then, in it's own special paragraph: "Attention women: You will stay inside your homes at all times. It is not proper for women to wander aimlessly about the streets...You will not, under any circumstances show your face... You will not speak unless spoken to... You will not laugh in public... Girls are forbidden from going to school. All schools for girls will be closed immediately."

Shall I go on? I'm re-reading and typing and I want to throw the book out of the fucking window again. Because, as I mentioned at the beginning, this stuff was (is) real. Throughout the novel Hosseini does not shy away either in the description of the assault on Afghanistan by the Taliban or the physical assaults that Laila and Mariam and eventually Rasheed are subjected to. In the same way that the current assault on the cultural heritage of Syria (which by the way is an assault on the cultural heritage of everyone on this planet), Laila finds herself being particularly horrified by the destruction of the enormous sculptures of Buddha she visited with her father and Tariq.  There is no getting around the subject matter- that of systematic and dismal destruction of culture and lives- but Hosseini does so with real humanity and truth, particularly through his handling of the relationship between Laila and Mariam. They do not instantly bond because they are women sharing a difficult situation. The process is a slow one, and driven as much by their own individual desires to survive as their collected one. But once forged the relationship is as deep as it is complex and the denouement of the novel will leave you utterly heartbroken.

It's probably clear from what I've written that the book is highly emotive. It is, as far as I can remember, the novel which has bought me to tears the most times. But I don't believe that is its main aim. It never feels hyperbolic or cynical- indeed it is the realism of the novel which is often the hardest to bear. Despite this there are moments of magic too and a couple of particularly fairytale like occurrences although Hosseini is clever in the construction of his characters to make it not merely a tale of good and evil. And incredibly, it is also a novel infused with hope. At the end there are good tears as well as sad ones. In the postscript to the novel Hosseini described A Thousand Splendid Suns as his 'modest tribute to the great courage, endurance and resilience of Afghanistan' and this is the sentiment that closes the novel. Rebuild and hope. There can always be hope. And in those moments, particularly those dark, unifying moments, this is the most important thing to hold on to.

The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt

This is going to be a bit of a mind-splurge, as is seeming becoming common-place in this blog. I find that it helps me to get the thoughts out of my head a bit more clearly.

The Goldfinch was an absolute by-the-till impulse purchase in a bookshop a few weeks ago. I have never read either of Tartt's other novels, as good as I am told they both are. I didn't really know anything about the novel either. So I didn't go into it with any expectations which I suspect was a good thing. I will now proceed, inevitably, to construct some expectations for you so if you favour a blank canvas approach to reading a new book (pardon the obvious metaphor), please turn away now.

The first thing to note about The Goldfinch is that Tartt's prose is immaculate- it is like sleeping in silk: you barely know it's there but you can feel the quality of it (this is a bit of a projected metaphor: I have never slept in silk, I sleep in ancient mismatched pyjamas of indistinguishable fibre). She glides her reader along with the utmost care, a street is described in 300 words, a note, an aside can take a page and a half but the story, or at least the first half of the story does not drag. There is no awkward crunch of a misplaced adjective, or an over-laden clause (in this respect it is the polar-opposite of this blog) and it seems to have been given the editorial care of a priceless object. This, as it turns out, is half the problem with the closing stages of the novel but more of that later.

The story revolves around Theodore Decker, a boy who, in a cruel twist of fate, loses his mother in a tragic and violent way. His action immediately after this event takes the rest of the novel to play out, over a period of 14 years taking in America and Europe. When we meet Theodore (or "Potter" as his damaged and spirited friend Boris takes to calling him, even into adulthood) he is holed up in a Dutch hotel room, sick in body and mind, recounting the story that has brought him to this point.

Theodore himself is written as a curiously absent character, with a personality fundamentally joined to the event that shattered his childhood. He is no where near as nuanced as the supporting players, particularly Boris, the poly-national drop-out he meets in Las Vegas, his damaged formally-absent father who takes him there, and the high-society Barbours who facing their own brittle realities initially take him in. The warmth, the heart of this story (although also present, albeit in an increasingly broken way, in the very fine characterisation of Mrs Barbour, particularly in the latter stages of the novel) is reserved for Hobie, the antique-restorer who fate throws into Theodore's path. The hulking benevolence of his character- juxtaposed with the ephemeral Pippa. is at once omniscient and naive and I was disappointed that Tartt, however understandably, relegates him from the final quarter of the novel, much as Theodore does.

There is much to appreciate in this novel, which at 864 pages in my edition, is no weekend read (nor should it be- in my humble opinion people who race through novels as if to win some sort of prize miss the point of reading entirely. I would say that though, I am a slow reader). However, the ending of the novel disappointed me no end. It didn't really have anything to do with the plot, which is resolved well- although the second the novel 'catches up' with itself in Amsterdam it all goes a bit bonkers-, but in the pseudo-academic meta-conclusioning that Tartt insists on putting her reader through, in Theodore's name and voice.

One of the main themes of the novel is the power of art on the individual and the place of art as a unifying agent across time and space (in a non-Doctor Who-y way). Theodore, like his mother before him, is captivated by the painting of the eponymous Goldfinch and his own conclusion is that regardless of the absolute nihilism which is part-and-parcel of the human existence (I know, ever so cheery, this) art, and in particular, a piece of art with which one truly connects, can act as a kind of salvation, Which, y'know, I get. However, Tartt then blunderingly breaks the reader/author/protagonist dynamic: suddenly Theodore is addressing a reader, as it becomes clear that he's been writing something all along ("although it doesn't matter since no one's ever going to see this" *snore...*), and talks about the beauty of understanding that "we can speak to each other across time" through art.

Suddenly the hand has been played. Like the intricate brush-works and textures on the canvas Tartt is suddenly screaming at us: isn't what I've just done beautiful? Aren't I clever? You'll carry this with you forever! Which is a massive gamble because, if you loved the novel more than any other book you've ever read, you'll cry "Oh god, I understand, this novel- it is my Goldfinch" and laugh and cry and know that you will be forever bound to this book, to all those who read it and have the same emotional connection, and you will, in your own small way, become immortal. If you don't (and this, dear reader, in case you were in any doubt, is where I am), you'll see The Goldfinch as a very fine book, like a very fine painting in a gallery, which you will close and go 'ahh' and have enjoyed, but which will have ultimately left you with the feeling that it was just a touch pretentious. Which is a great shame, because the craft is spectacular. The plot is compelling, I just felt that Tartt reached a little too far in her closing pages and, in so doing, overcooked her Goldfinch just ever-so slightly.

Perhaps I am being disingenuous- perhaps Tartt is making a wider point about art which doesn't direct include her own work. But the fact that the novel is called The Goldfinch does bring out my cynical side. However, who am I to argue, I haven't won a Pulitzer for anything (there's no blog category, right?). So reader, I recommend this book to you, if only so you can make up your own mind.

'Untitled'

Feel like I haven't read anything in full for ages so this isn't a book post. I was rifling through some papers the other day and found a poem I'd written a few months ago which on re-reading, didn't make me cringe and scrunch up into a tiny ball (me, not the poem. I tend not to throw away, however awful), mainly because it memorialises a time for me that deserves to be remembered. I re-jigged it a bit and, in the spirit of elephant-brainedness copied it below. It's a sentimental mind-splat without a lot of craft so don't take it too seriously.


"It's hard to blaze a trail when it's so
damned cold" she said

"It's amazing what they'll wear to keep warm"

A drawl met with scowls and typing
And a chocolat chaud from
the 40 cent machine

Hardly the dream of the bourgeoisie:

Enough for bread and cheese and
not much else
(the waiter in the Flore disdained us, quel surprise)

Wine experts decreed 1.80 a bottle was all we'd need --
and that it was,
nauseated from the Gare de L'Est
to Montparnasse
then home to bed as the rest
went out again.

A day of fur and pearls and
playing dress-up to troop into
the cold for a bar we never found
(we out-performed the boulevard, that day).

Paris with tea-drinkers:
Yellow tags and chips on the Ile:
The accent tripping further away,
our 'pardonnez' lost in the Englishness of our apologies.

*

One day the hawkers took no notice
as we reached the foot of the Tour
so we'd arrived, with no glance to the sky
To see it ironed into triangles of cloud.

And still we rode the 4 north and south
between the same old haunts.

'Til at last,

one day in May,
and the sun on our bellies on the Promenade des Anglais,
we thawed
and slept
and dreamed of where we'd been,
where we'd forever be.
                      

Maya Angelou- Still I Rise

In memory of Dr Maya Angelou, who passed away today aged 86 I was going to post my favourite poem of her's, 'Still I Rise' without comment, convinced that nothing I could say would ever live up to the power and brilliance of her own words. But although I still believe that what I have to say about her could never match what she had to say about herself and her work, one of the most abiding sentiments that Dr Angelou has left for me is that to hide oneself for fear of failure and recrimination is not living life to its full potential- that emotions and the essence of living should be celebrated. So although I have cried three times already over her passing (which when you're in an office is surprisingly difficult to conceal) and am writing this on a laptop that is substantially older than Justin Bieber's career (and may in fact be older than Justin Bieber himself) here I write my own interpretation of her words.

The poem can be found here http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/still-i-rise and it might be better to open it in a second tab. I'm also putting a link to Angelou reading a slightly edited version of the poem. She has a truly wonderful voice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqOqo50LSZ0

'Still I Rise' is a poem that does just that, and the oxymoron of the title is the gateway by which Angelou uses supreme control of language to make the rhetoric, the hyperbole of the lines more powerful. The first verse is confrontational with the power immediately held by the voice of the poem (Angelou herself): 'You may write me down in history' she begins and then subverts immediately 'with your bitter, twisted lies'- the tone of the stanza is hard (it's easy to get some real venom behind the harsh consonants in both 'bitter' and 'twisted') but the end of it is lifted, held and controlled by her use of commas 'But still, like dust, I rise'.

The second verse works in opposition: sassiness is a fabulous word to say, although with a southern English accent you really do need to put a lot of sass into it for it to sound right! Its bright sibilance fizzes in contrast to the darker images and longer vowel sounds, the 'gloom' and 'oil' in the second and third lines (oil being oxymoronic too being physically dark but prized). The rhetorical questions that become part of the fabric of the poem are both challenging and  humorous- later on she will ask 'Does my haughtiness offend you?' 'Does my sexiness upset you?'- the symmetry in the rhythms of these lines becoming taunts to her opponents. And for all that the nature of this poem is a serious and angry confrontation, what does she do when goaded? She dances and laughs in celebration of her own worth, here manifested as gold mines and diamonds, natural resources taken by man. It is an interesting opposition to the images with which Angelou herself identifies: the ocean, the moons and suns: all things that are greater than mankind itself, world-shifting and profound.

The images associated with those unknown (although very much known) foes in the poem are brutal: 'You may kill me with your hatefulness' Angelou writes, mirroring her opening line. Indeed, the notion of her broken body 'bowed head', 'shoulders falling' in the face of this hatefulness only serves to emphasise this possibility of total destruction, both physically and psychologically. However, the refrain and the overriding sound at the end of the poem with the lengthened 'i' sound in 'rise' an unstoppable exhalation, the breath that drives the poem, the voice, keeps going. Indeed, the increased frequency of the phrase 'I rise' and the change in meter in the final two stanzas mean that the reader speaking the poem aloud takes in more and more breath, becomes, in a sense, more alive as the poem reaches its powerful crescendo. This crescendo is also emphasised by the powerful iambic lines: 'Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave/I am the dream and the hope of the slave'. Angelou's message here becomes clear: taking the hurt and the suffering of her own life, of her history and the history of her ancestors has galvanised a response which will see her going far beyond above the people who would crush her. The end, depending on how you read it, is a meditative sigh or a chanting cry: 'I rise/I rise/I rise'.

It's a poem that never fails to give me goosebumps and it is Angelou's skill as a poet as well as the sentiment of the words themselves that inspire such a powerful reaction in me, and in many people who read or hear her work. I was wondering this evening why her death so upset me and I think the reason is this: that such a woman with such tremendous capability to live to the fullest potential of her being has now left us, makes her death seem somehow more profound. But the truth is, the very fact that such a person has existed, and that we can share in her thoughts and her life is a joy that can never be extinguished. And so, in that spirit, Angelou can have the final word here:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." 

Americanah- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I had to leave this post unfinished and was going to leave it unpublished as well but on re-reading I realised that I'd got further with it than I thought. I'm posting it here because this is a great book, I'm just sorry that my thoughts on it are a little under-developed.

I'm a big fan of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and I was gutted to have missed the premiere of Half of a Yellow Sun in Streatham a few of weeks ago. There are lots of things to say about this book- mostly compliments- but there are also a couple of things  about the novel that just lacked a bit of the magic of her previous two novels, and in particular Half of a Yellow Sun which is one of the most astonishing books I have ever read.

Americanah is a departure from the subject matter of Adichie's previous two books. In Americanah, the political situation in Nigeria is the catalyst for the action rather than the subject of the novel as two school mates Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love and go to university in nineties Lagos, amidst the chaos of teacher strikes and military disquiet. Half way through their undergraduate degrees Ifemelu departs for America to complete her studies while Obinze remains in Nigeria before trying his luck in the UK. The themes of love, separation and reconciliation run through the novel but this, frankly, is no where near as interesting as the development of Obinze and, particularly, Ifemelu and the identity politics of being a Black African in America and Europe.

In fact, where Adichie is strongest in the novel is where she is engaging with race through Ifemelu's blogs. It is polemical stuff in its directness, and ensures that readers are fully confronted with the underlying racism (and sexism) at work in so many aspects of Euro-American society. The blogs, emails and texts that permeate this novel  are fascinating in themselves as literary devices as they are undoubtedly the 21st century epistolary reality in literature. We encounter all three every day yet why does it feel so much more modern when they are used in literature? Is it because we are used to the diarist, to the correspondence by letter? How many books can you name using a technological epistolary device that you would deem 'classic'? This gets us in to the realm of 'what makes a classic?' 'what makes a novel a work of literature?': important questions but not the original intention of this post.

But it is interesting nonetheless that, through Ifemelu, Adichie presents her readers with two courses of food for thought: racial prejudice and literary snobbishness. Confronting her reader with both of these simultaneously can almost feel overwhelming and there were a couple of moments, when I was reading this on my commute, that I had to close the book for a few moments and just think about my own attitudes, as a reader of fiction, as a white privileged woman. I loathe this phrase but I've never felt so compelled to check my own privilege as I have reading this book.

That said, I was a little unsatisfied by the conclusion to the book and it felt that, as important as Ifemelu's return to Nigeria was in the trajectory of the novel, the return to her relationship (the word here used in the most general, non-loaded way to avoid any spoilers) with Obinze did not ring true with their characters. This is a shame because it is the last impression I had of the book. But there is much here to enjoy, to be interested and challenged by, and Adichie remains one of the most interesting and compelling authors out there.

Happy Birthday Mr. Shakespeare

Today commemorates, approximately, the 450th birthday of William Shakespeare and so to mark the occasion I have chosen to revisit a piece of text that first made me realise just quite what a genius he was. I was fifteen and reading Romeo and Juliet as part of my GCSEs and decided I'd do a little exercise in close reading. Never one to self edit, the result was a 3000 word monstrosity of coursework. Here I present a much revised, hopefully much shorter, and pretty irreverent commentary on one of the most famous exchanges in the play.

ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand,
                This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
                My lips two blushing Pilgrims ready stand,
                To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET: Good Pilgrim you do wrong your hand too much
              Which mannerly devotion shows in this,
               For saints have hands, that Pilgrims' hands do touch
               And palm to palm is holy Palmers' kiss.
ROMEO: Have not Saints lips and holy Palmers too?
JULIET: Ay Pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer
ROMEO: O then dear Saint, let lips do what hands do,
                They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
JULIET: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
ROMEO: Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
                                                         [Act 1, Scene 5]
And they snog.

Now everyone likes a good flirt but if you flirt with Shakespeare's words in your mouth well, heaven help your flirtee. But before we get to these words, let's get some context. Although with minimal dramatic licence most productions of R&J will have had them making googly eyes at each other before this exchange, the first important thing to note is that Romeo has already spotted Juliet, but she has not necessarily seen him. He's likened her to a 'snowy dove' among crows and foreshadowed her death by observing that she seems 'for earth too dear'. For him, Juliet is dazzling energy itself ('she doth teach the torches to burn bright') and this is in direct contrast to the darkness of Romeo who 'shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out/And makes himself an artificial light' (the 'artificial light' I think it's fair to assume, is a metaphor for Rosaline). Their love will consume them entirely- light annihilates the darkness as darkness annihilates the light. Their story is a juxtaposition of opposites and balance and it has already started.

Now just a note on the verse form and then I promise we'll get going. This is, when read in isolation, a sonnet. And a sonnet is traditionally one of the most trussed up of verse forms. This version is a classic Elizabethan version, written in iambic pentameter with a defined rhyme scheme. Which makes it a Mr-Darcy-in-a-wet-shirt sort of exchange. The structure means that we can all see exactly what's underneath, and it's hot: the sensuality is there clad in translucently restrictive garb. The regular, heart beat rhythm that ebbs and flows between the two characters dominates but there are a couple of heart-skippy moments: both of which up the ante that bit more. Shakespeare packs the sonnet with noun repetitions: 'saint', 'prayer', 'hands' but when the repeated word 'lips' crops up in line 9 the first de-dum that you would expect from an iambic line gets sort of squashed, and the heartbeat skips a beat. It does the same when Juliet says 'move' in line 13 and stops the flow of the line. Clever, eh?  

Now to the words. Romeo really goes for it doesn't he? To him, as I've already said, Juliet is other-worldly: the summary of his lines is basically: you are biblically hot, am I allowed to kiss you? He's ready to profane but once again Shakespeare balances this with doubt, and the hyperbole is tempered by the opening word 'If' and the coyly 'gentle sin'. On the other hand his lips are blushing with both doubt and arousal and you try saying 'smooth touch' without making a kissy face (you just tried it, didn't you. Adorable). So cards are very much on the table. Oh Mr. S, you are so cunning. But this is no peacock display: the ball is quite determinedly placed in Juliet's court. And she has yet to make her judgement.

'Good Pilgrim' are her first words. Good being a good sign, and a repetition of Romeo's description of himself making it clear that she's in on the joke, and she likes it. You know that people attracted to each other mirror each other's body language? Well, this is the verbal equivalent. Juliet immediately picks up on the imagery but neutralises it somewhat 'Saints have hands that Pilgrims' hands do touch': hey buddy, you've got hands, I've got hands. Get me off this pedestal a bit and let's do something with... hands. Flirty, sexy undertones but joining in the Saint/Pilgrim joke. Are these two made for each other or what? With this encouragement Romeo then decides to try it on a bit: 'Have not Saints lips..?', Juliet reciprocates 'Ay Pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer'.

So, if hands come together in prayer 'let lips do what hands do' says Romeo, ever the logician. Crunch time. Come of Jules, we're all rooting for you. 'Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake' she says. Alright Your Royal Coyness. She's brought the metaphor home and is not going anywhere, except to be kissed, the word 'move' ironically grounded mid-sentence by a comma. A hesitation, but crucially, she's has the deciding line, and she has given Romeo the divine right. 'Then move not' he says as he leans in and the entire audience go wobbly kneed, 'while my prayer's effect I take'.

If only this was the grand finale, eh? The curtain comes down and the world goes away with a happy heart. But the prologue has told us otherwise and it's already gone wrong as Juliet realises just after this exchange: 'my only love sprung from my only hate/Too early seen, unknown, and known too late' which, brutal though it is, is a phenomenally balanced line.

So like so many teenage infatuations, this post is over before it has barely begun. Despite that however, I hope you've enjoyed my little analysis: sad to say perhaps, but this is one of my absolutely favourite ways to spend my time. But for now I'll bid you adieu: I'm off to have a slice of cake in the great man's honour.