What do you think this sonnet is supposed to mean?

Read this poem Links to an external site.

SONNET
All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this next 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 while 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.

written in 1999 by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Look at the terms and phrases that he uses, and look at the sonnet style that is utilized. Pay attention to the sonnet form, as you have learned about in this module, and see if you can identify the overall tone and mood.Links to an external site.

Then, in a 1-2 page response, analyze Collins’ poem and describe some of the allusionsLinks to an external site. that are made in the poem. What do you think is Collins’ intent? What do you think this sonnet is supposed to mean? Reference at least two of the sonnets from the module reading and discuss how Collins’ sonnet helps you better understand the sonnets in this module. Use citations when appropriate.
If you are quoting a line from a poem, it should look something like this: “While Shakespeare doesn’t identify the subject of his tirade, he proclaims to the “dark lady” that “thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art” (line 8).

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