The Making of Sonnets

The world is too much with us, goes the sonnet. And in fourteen lines we're off, into the "jewel box" of poetic form. How do I love thee? Death, be not proud. My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun.

For five hundred years and more, from Petrarch and Shakespeare to Ginsburg and Seamus Heaney, the sonnet has beguiled and teased and thrilled — and informed us on the human condition.

How do they do it? Many ways. "You jerk, you didn't call me up," starts one.

A new anthology tells the story. This hour, On Point: the making of the sonnet.Guests:

Edward Hirsch, a poet and essayist, is co-editor (with Eavan Boland) of the new Norton anthology, "The Making of a Sonnet."

Eavan Boland, co-editor of "The Making of a Sonnet," is a poet and the director of the creative writing program at Stanford University.