Dear —
I was thinking about this line today:
"... Turns into yellow-gold Neptune's salt-green streams."
This is Shakespeare describing the effect of sunrise reflected in the sea. God, what magnificent poetry!
He gives this line to Oberon (speaking to Puck) in A Midsummer Night's Dream. I recall the first time I read this passage, which begins: "I with the morning's love have oft made sport..." I was sitting in a diner on New York's upper east side and was moved to tears by the beauty of Shakespeare's language.
Later, I would get to perform these lines when I played Oberon in a bilingual production at the Penghao Theatre in Beijing (picture above), an experience I include in Dueling the Dragon: Five Memoirs About Living and Working in China.
Shakespeare's lines also remind me of the sensations I experienced when swimming off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica a couple of years ago. I was house-sitting at the time, and writing My Portable Paradise: Transform Your Life Through House Sitting.
As for the poetry side of things, I am deep into preparing Her Infinite Variety: Odes to the Mortal Goddess, scheduled for publication this year. Here's one of my narrations from it, Epilogue to the Arabian Nights.
"Your loves as mine to you." (To quote Shakespeare, as I often do.)
Abdiel
Website: PoetProphet.com
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