Sonnet


[1]

by Billy Collins (1999)

 

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.

Footnotes

  1. In this particular poem, Collins chooses not to employ any meter or rhyme that is necessary for a sonnet. In fact, if the poem were not composed of 14 lines and had not the speaker and the title indicated to us that this poem is a sonnet, it would be almost impossible to figure out whether this is a sonnet or not. In that sense, the poet manages to convey his idea of sonnets more emphatically by creating a sonnet devoid of form which is a perfect example of his idea of a sonnet that is bound neither by form, rhyme nor meter. ▲