These poems are, I suppose you would say, informal poems.
And I think my detractors would say that's putting it mildly.
[LAUGHTER]
But we should all try our hand at the forms.
And so I'll read this poem called "Sonnet."
And just to remind you that Petrarch,
the Italian poet, if he didn't invent the sonnet,
he at least made it popular enough in Italy
to be imported vigorously into England.
And Petrarch dedicates all of his love poems
in the Canzoniere to a woman he calls Laura.
And the poem is called "Sonnet."
"All we need is 14 lines.
Well, 13 now.
[LAUGHTER]
And after this one, just a dozen to launch a little ship
on love's storm-tossed seas.
Then only 10 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--
[LAUGHTER]
--blow out the lights, and come at last to bed."
[LAUGHTER, CHEERING, AND APPLAUSE]
Probably should get those together, those two.