Notes on the Sonnets by Luke Kennard
PBS Recommendation Summer 2021

PBS Recommendation Summer 2021

Luke Kennard recasts Shakespeare's 154 sonnets as a series of anarchic prose poems set in the same joyless house party. A physicist explains dark matter in the kitchen. A crying man is consoled by a Sigmund Freud action figure. An out-of-hours doctor sells phials of dark red liquid from a briefcase. Someone takes out a guitar. Wry, insolent and self-eviscerating, Notes on the Sonnets riddles the Bard with the anxieties of the modern age, bringing Kennards affectionate critique to subjects as various as love, marriage, God, metaphysics and a sad horse.