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But Petrarch also was a tool, in which people seemed to see the world through the prism of Petrarchan imagery, especially when it came to the private passions.

In some cases, the poems express what seem to be truly personal cris de coeur, even if the imagery employed — gardens, the breeze at dawn, tears, wine and roses — is as conventional as that found in a Petrarchan sonnet or a Japanese haiku.

It’s also true that, in order to portray the kinds of psychic shifts required by the Petrarchan volta, Lock would have had to allow herself the kind of invention that was forbidden to women.

The home purge show is now as rigorously structured as the hero’s journey or a Petrarchan sonnet.

Unlike the Petrarchan or Shakespearean sonnets — 14 lines of verse ruled by octave and sestet, iambic pentameter and volta, alternating end-rhymes or rhymed closing couplets — the American sonnet, like this peculiar political era, is governed by only the loosest relation to established, formal principles: yes, 14, at least 10 syllables each, but no rhyme or reason seems necessary.