Hi and welcome to my Friday series The Hairbag Poet.

You can read about the history of this series here.

In the blogging world Fridays are known as Poetry Friday.  You can read about Poetry Friday here. I will plan on posting The Hairbag Poet each Friday.

Today the Hairbag Poet, (that’s me), will be discussing the Soliloquy. I just love the way the word soliloquy rolls off the tongue, like lullaby or happy hour. It’s a great word all by itself, but ironically it defines a great many spoken words. Soliloquy comes from the Latin sōliloquium meaning a talking to oneself.

According to Poetry Foundation (2017), “A soliloquy is a monologue in which a character in a play expresses thoughts and feelings while being alone on stage. Soliloquies allow dramatists to communicate information about a character’s state of mind, hopes, and intentions directly to an audience. Soliloquies became a dramatic convention in the 1590s and 1600s, when playwrights used the technique to allow characters to reveal important plot points.” Of course we all are familiar with the master of the soliloquy, William Shakespeare, and some of his famously written soliloquys from the plays Hamlet, Macbeth, and Othello. 

Hamlet:
To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them…

A brief 39-word excerpt out of a 278-word soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Brilliant right?

I hope you enjoy these posts. Thanks for stopping by and reading, and please feel free to post your own poetry in the comments if you feel inspired by the photographs. I always love reading other peoples perspective on “art”.

 

The Hairbag Poet

Extinction

I’m not extinct…
Yet.
Try as they might, I run for cover.
Neither meteor nor volcano will be my demise.
Hark,
who goes there?
My foggy cloak’s opacity is waning.
Damn these jimmies!
Oh how my gait dulls.
My wilting dough is no match against natures icy tundra.
Hot breath wisps at the nape of my neck,
causing prickly hairs to rise like quills en garde.
My nostrils inhale the hungered anticipation.
The time is near.
I too will disappear without a trace.
A scientific mystery or a confectionary folklore?
Alas, a crumbly remnant in the fossil record.
Indeed
This is the way the cookie crumbles.