{"id":366517,"date":"2022-04-18T06:04:19","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T20:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=366517"},"modified":"2022-04-18T06:04:19","modified_gmt":"2022-04-17T20:04:19","slug":"april-is-national-poetry-month-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/april-is-national-poetry-month-4\/","title":{"rendered":"April is National Poetry Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare (04\/23\/1564) and to Maya Angelou (04\/04\/1928)<\/em><\/p>\n

Two famous Irish poets share the same April birthdate, April 13, and both of them\u00a0received a Nobel Prize for Literature. Samuel Beckett was born April 13, 1906, died Dec. 22, 1989, and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
\nSeamus Heaney was born March 13, 1939, and died Aug. 30, 2013. The Nobel Prize in\u00a0Literature 1995 was awarded to\u00a0Seamus Heaney \u201cfor works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past.\u201d\u00a0
\nTwo living Irish poets: Michael Higgins born April 18, 1941, is currently serving his second term as the president of Ireland. Gabriel Rosenstock, born April 29, 1949, writes and translates in Gaelic and English languages. Gabriel is a poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author of over 180 books mostly in Gaelic. He is also a friend of mine and lives in Dublin, Ireland. All these poets have written other forms of literature and taught poetry at various times in their careers. Please check out their poetic works if you have not done so.
\nThe following first appeared in the Saipan Tribune on April 23, 2018. It contains Shakespeare\u2019s original\u00a0Sonnet #130 and a parody of it written by me. Enjoy!<\/p>\n

Sonnet #130<\/strong>
\nBy William Shakespeare<\/p>\n

My mistress\u2019 eyes are nothing like the sun;
\nCoral is far more red than her lips\u2019 red;
\nIf snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
\nIf hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head;
\nI have seen roses damasked, red and white,
\nBut no such roses see I in her cheeks;
\nAnd in some perfumes is there more delight
\nThan in the breath that from my mistress reeks
\nI love to hear her speak, yet well I know
\nThat music hath a far more pleasing sound.
\nI grant I never saw a goddess go;
\nMy mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
\nAnd yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
\nAs any she belied with false compare.<\/p>\n

\u2018My Tax Returns Will Never See\u2019<\/strong>
\nParody by J.B. Connolly<\/p>\n

My tax returns will never see the light of day
\nI dread not rubles or ties with Russian red\u00a0
\nmy money stashed in Wall St. every which way
\nits whereabouts known only inside my dyed head
\nI have rubles galore unmasked Russian red and white
\nhaven\u2019t seen any in my accounts\u00a0for months and weeks
\nI\u2019ll have to have an oligarch over for drinks tonight
\ngive him some old Trump vodka and see if he leaks
\n\u00a0 \u00a0I\u203all roll my rubles over in some small Swiss bourse
\ntime to lay low stop contacting my Russian oligarchs
\nnow time for a few rounds on my Mar A Lago course
\ngreenback leisure for us mighty plutocratic monarchs.
\nYes, my friend\u00a0Vladimir Putin thinks my brain is \u2018rare\u2019
\nas usual only with himself does he care to compare.<\/p>\n

Joey ‘Pepe Batbon’ Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong>
\nJoey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy birthday to William Shakespeare (04\/23\/1564) and to Maya Angelou (04\/04\/1928) Two famous Irish poets…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":355846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,16617,23673,13843],"class_list":["post-366517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}