Thursday, February 19, 2009

Screw You Closed Form Poetry!

Below is a sonnet I came across in one of my school books. I think it is fun. I read it and I enjoyed it. I think that you should read it. And enjoy it. Or do both at once.

Oh, I’m sure that you know this, but Petrarch was the guy who basically invented the Sonnet form and Laura was his muse.

Sonnet - Billy Collins
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on here wile we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blow out the lights, and come at last to bed.

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