Thinking of the transience of language and how it correlates with cultural change over time, I wondered, What if classic poems were translated to now? I chose a few well-known poems and took a shot at updating them. If you’re wondering why the poets I chose are all male, it’s because I wanted to go for easily recognizable titles, and for the longest time, only men were allowed to be openly literary and write poems for all the world to see.

Here’s what these guys might have written if their world looked like ours:

1). Robert Frost

• Then: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
• Now: Stopping to buy Weed on a Snowy Evening

2). Edgar Allen Poe

• Then: The Raven
• Now: The Rain Man (“Quoth the rain man, ‘Nevermore.'”)

3). Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Then: Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Now: Rime of the Darth Vader

4). William Carlos Williams

• Then: The Red Wheelbarrow
• Now: The Target Red Card

5). William Blake

• Then: The Tiger
• Now: The Flesh-Eating Bacteria

6). John Milton

• Then: Paradise Lost
• Now: Sanity Lost

7). William Shakespeare

• Then: “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?” (Sonnet XVIII)
• Now: “Shall I Compare Thee to a Vacation with Pay?”

8). T.S. Eliot

• Then: “Let us go then, you and I” (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
• Now: “Don’t they ever stop migrating?” (The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock)

9). Allen Ginsberg

• Then: Howl
• Now: LOL

10). Andrew Marvell

• Then: To His Coy Mistress
• Now: To His Sugar Baby

 

 

Happy October Eve!