Billy Collins Sonnet Summary

“An Analysis of Sonnet”
An introduction should keep a reader’s attention for more than one sentence, hopefully. It should aim to have more sentences than the amount of letters in “should.” It should explain in a paragraph a brief summary of what’s to come. It should…shouldn’t it? In the same way an introduction can be referenced sarcastically, Billy Collins uses several techniques to mock sonnets. In “Sonnet” Billy Collins uses speaker, external form and tone to mock the traditional sonnets.
The speaker in this sonnet very quickly establishes a point of view by throwing out a pronoun to give a perspective as to who is speaking. In the very first line the second word “we” tells readers that the speaker is speaking in first person, including
It can help a reader distinguish between sarcasm and true joy. Without tone the reader can miss the point the writer is trying to get across. In “Sonnet” the tone of the speaker stands out and is very recognizable as sarcasm, starting in the first line: “All we need is fourteen lines.” The speaker clearly shows a disdain for the overly complicated traditional sonnet, and sets out to show that sonnets are actually very basic and predictable. The speaker’s tone pokes fun at the traditional style of sonnets by making fun of the structure, the rhyming scheme, and the love story. From the start of the poem the speaker talks about the structure of a traditional sonnet by saying “All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen” (lines 1-2). The big clue for sarcasm is the word “well” (line 1). Using the word “well” in this way acts as a conversational pause and an interrupter, giving off an informal and dismissive air. In line 2 the speaker continues with this sarcasm, saying “and after this one just a dozen,” referring to the number of lines left in a traditional sonnet, and referencing how easy and basic sonnet-writing can be. Another mocking tone surfaces when the speaker first talks about love, and he/she mentions “love’s storm-tossed seas,” (line 3) in a sense rolling his/her eyes towards love’s drama. The speaker then continues making statements about the ease with which they are able to write this current sonnet as opposed to the Elizabethan style, which does “insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned and the ends of lines” (lines 6-7). The speaker clearly does not follow the traditional tonal style of a sonnet, but instead uses a sarcastic tone to make fun of them by mocking the style in which they are written. Lastly, the speaker seemingly takes a jab at Petrarch who is an “Italian poet regarded as the father of the sonnet” (Mays,