These are all splendid, but I'm partial to "The expense of spirits" for the way it plays on contemporary meanings of Shakespeare's diction. "Expense of spirit in a waste of shame," which seems clear enough once one gets the words in the original context, is a real stumper when one is constrained by our more familiar uses (just "use," as in "Sweet are the uses of adversity"!). To me, Cope's sonnet comments on the flattening of language in general, poetry in particular. I have strong reservations about the idea that culture, whatever that is, has been on the decline since [fill in your preferred era here], but it sure can feel that way when I hear the awful contortions poems are put through as naive readers try to preserve their limited sphere of reference. Even a poem hundreds of years more recent, Hardy's "The Ruined Maid," gets wrecked when a reader knows only that "maid" means a woman hired to serve in a rich man's house. At the same time, Cope's poem reminds us that while we're all being so pompous our spirits, as it were, are working on another, earthier level. It's funny, and all the funnier for being true in a couple of striking ways.
Richard
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