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