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Celebrating the Bard this week, here's Erik Didriksen, author of Pop Sonnets, with a sonnet inspired by Cole Porter!

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Normally I’d turn that lyric into a line of iambic pentameter. Today, I think it’s fine the way it is. With a few short words, the Grateful Dead pretty much summed up my last two years or so — from the first moments of rewriting a Carly Rae Jepsen song as Shakespeare to putting the finishing touches on the book. The entire process has been extraordinary in both senses of the word: wonderful and kinda far out, man.  It’s also been educational. At the outset, I didn’t know “thee” from “thou,” or when a word like “make” should become “makest.” But there are less obvious things I’ve picked up while translating pop songs into sonnets — things I can’t pass on in the sonnets themselves. Here are some of the more entertaining ones:

Over the last few days, Twitter has been alight with the hashtag #15SecondShakespeare, where actors recite song lyrics as if they were Elizabethan soliloquies. Not only are they hilarious, they're raising money and awareness for the Red Cross. Here are some of our favorite highlights — paired with a matching Pop Sonnets to take it one step further!

If your summer has been nothing but blowing out flip flops, and stepping on pop tops, it looks like you could use a trip to Margaritaville. 

"Summer, summer, summertiiiiiiiime. Time to sit back and unwind."

It's Pop Sonnets author Erik Didriksen back with another Shakespearean sonnet inspired by a classic summer jam. Hope you can make it to our barbeque starting at four. 

To celebrate the heydays and heat waves of summer, Pop Sonnets author Erik Didriksen will debut a weekly Shakespearean sonnet inspired by a classic summer jam. Today, we're wondering if you're even ready for the brand new beat? Because "summer's here and the time is right…"