Explain the metaphor in the second stanza.

Explain the metaphor in the second stanza.
Explain what the speaker is asking Love (yes, the personification) to do in the third stanzaJust one question, this week. In three successive paragraphs, address the following:
Summarize the poem, one sentence per stanza.
Explain the metaphor in the second stanza.
Explain what the speaker is asking Love (yes, the personification) to do in the third stanza.

I am linking a video here from a conference presentation–this is the kind of thing scholars also do: we get together and in fifteen minutes or so present our research. In this case, we have a presentation from 2015 by Linda Gregerson, an American poet who is one of the Chancellors of the American Academy of Poets.
The sonnet started in Italy, really Sicily, in the thirteenth century, and part of what we’re looking at is how it got to England, and what had to be done to make that possible. Have a quick look at the Wikipedia article on the sonnet.
There are many ins and outs to the development of the English sonnet (or sonnets–there’s different kinds), and Gregerson is addressing one specific aspect, that she, as a poet, had gotten interested in: these lyrical poems, as they “move” from Italy to England, acquire a different direction: instead of remaining inward and meditative, as she signals for a poem/sonnet by Petrarch (no. 190, it’s in the book for next week), the lyric poem turns “outward”, toward not just an audience but also to a community of readers and writers. Her evidence for that is a translation/interpretation of that Petrarch poem by the English poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”–that’s also on the menu for next week.
I’m bringing this up now because I think it helps in reading the sonnet by Queen Elizabeth, which is very intimate, and does NOT seem to point “outward” in the way that other sonnets of this time do–but maybe that is also because as a woman and as a queen, she could hardly be very open about her emotions, especially if they involved politics. That’s the contradiction of her life: the most powerful woman of the world of her time was really powerless in making that intimate decision, of who to marry–since her private life was always public because she was a queen. The introduction in the Norton has more to say on the topic.
Here’s the lecture: Linda Gregerson, on the sonnet, 2015I am linking a video here from a conference presentation–this is the kind of thing scholars also do: we get together and in fifteen minutes or so present our research. In this case, we have a presentation from 2015 by Linda Gregerson, an American poet who is one of the Chancellors of the American Academy of Poets.
The sonnet started in Italy, really Sicily, in the thirteenth century, and part of what we’re looking at is how it got to England, and what had to be done to make that possible. Have a quick look at the Wikipedia article on the sonnet.
There are many ins and outs to the development of the English sonnet (or sonnets–there’s different kinds), and Gregerson is addressing one specific aspect, that she, as a poet, had gotten interested in: these lyrical poems, as they “move” from Italy to England, acquire a different direction: instead of remaining inward and meditative, as she signals for a poem/sonnet by Petrarch (no. 190, it’s in the book for next week), the lyric poem turns “outward”, toward not just an audience but also to a community of readers and writers. Her evidence for that is a translation/interpretation of that Petrarch poem by the English poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt, “Whoso List to Hunt”–that’s also on the menu for next week.
I’m bringing this up now because I think it helps in reading the sonnet by Queen Elizabeth, which is very intimate, and does NOT seem to point “outward” in the way that other sonnets of this time do–but maybe that is also because as a woman and as a queen, she could hardly be very open about her emotions, especially if they involved politics. That’s the contradiction of her life: the most powerful woman of the world of her time was really powerless in making that intimate decision, of who to marry–since her private life was always public because she was a queen. The introduction in the Norton has more to say on the topic.
Here’s the lecture: Linda Gregerson, on the sonnet, 2015

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