Episode #127 Raiders of the Lost Petrarch - Sonnet Week Ep. 3

Connor and Jack close out National Poetry Month 2021 with a series of episodes exploring the history and enduring popularity of one of poetry's iconic forms: the sonnet. In episode three they travel back to cusp-of-the-Renaissance-Italy to discuss Petrarch, one of the earliest and best known masters of the sonnet. They discuss his infatuation with a woman named Laura, dig into one of his works, and even bring the conversation around to the MCU.

Sonnet 90

By: Petrarch (translated by Anthony Mortimer)

Upon the breeze she spread her golden hair

That in a thousand gentle knots was turned

And the sweet light beyond all measure burned

In eyes where now that radiance is rare;

And in her face there seemed to come an air

Of pity, true or false, that I discerned:

I had love’s tinder in my breast unburned

Was it a wonder if it kindled there?

She moved not like a mortal, but as though

She bore an angel’s form, her words had then

A sound that simple human voices lack;

A heavenly spirit, a living sun

Was what I saw; now, if it is not so,

The wound’s not healed because the bow grows slack

Monica Youn on Petrarch and the sonnet: https://poetshouse.org/petrarchs-hangover-an-argument-in-five-sonnets/

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