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These poems are, I suppose
you would say, informal poems.

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And I think my detractors would
say that's putting it mildly.

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[LAUGHTER]

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But we should all try
our hand at the forms.

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And so I'll read this
poem called "Sonnet."

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And just to remind
you that Petrarch,

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the Italian poet, if he
didn't invent the sonnet,

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he at least made it
popular enough in Italy

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to be imported
vigorously into England.

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And Petrarch dedicates
all of his love poems

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in the Canzoniere to a
woman he calls Laura.

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And the poem is called "Sonnet."

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"All we need is 14 lines.

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Well, 13 now.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And after this one, just a
dozen to launch a little ship

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on love's storm-tossed seas.

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Then only 10 more left
like rows of beans.

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How easily it goes unless you
get Elizabethan and insist

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the iambic bongos must be
played and rhymes positioned

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at the ends of lines-- one for
every station of the cross.

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But hang on here while we make
the turn into the final six,

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where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache

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will find an end.

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Where Laura will tell
Petrarch to put down his pen,

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take off those crazy
medieval tights--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--blow out the lights,
and come at last to bed."

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[LAUGHTER, CHEERING, AND
 APPLAUSE]

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Probably should get those
together, those two.

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