Metzger has a doctorate in English Renaissance literature. She teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico, where she is a lecturer in the English department and an adjunct professor in the university's honors program. In this essay, Metzger discusses Milton's reworking of the sonnet format in his poem and explores the influences of earlier and contemporary English poets on Milton and the development of the sonnet format.

In England, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were marked by a phenomenal outpouring of poetic talent. The poets of this era often took older established formulas and rewrote and revised the formulas to express new, often controversial, ideas about their world. These poems were not published until many years after their composition. Instead, the poems were copied and circulated among other poets. This circulation of poems led to a competitiveness between poets, with each successive poet "playing...