On first looking into Hooker’s Cyrano

I wrote this sonnet in mid-2020, after hearing Kat read Cyrano aloud to me. I posted it on Facebook formatted as prose; I enjoy formatting verse as prose, but I suspect that much of the time when I do that, it’s not clear to readers that it’s verse. So here it is formatted more like a sonnet.

So, Kat and I were talking weeks ago;

she mentioned Cyrano de Bergerac.

I said I hadn’t read it; she said “Oh!”,

and seemed to find my ignorance a lack

that should be remedied. So she set out

to read the play entire, through and through,

to me by telephone. I was in doubt

at first, but over time my laughter grew

along with my delight. The play is rife

with wit—translated by B. Hooker, who

in lovely blank verse brought the play to life

in English—and with charm and pathos, too.

And so from paper copy I’ll proceed

to make an ebook that you all can read.


Not long thereafter, I finished creating the ebook, which you can now acquire for free from any of the major ebook venues.