I went to the event on How to read a sonnet. At first, I thought the event would be boring because it is about poetry. I am not good with poems and I often do not enjoy reading them. To me, poems are all riddles and you have to find out what the author is actually trying to tell the readers. I do not know much about poems but today I learn what a sonnet is. A sonnet in poetry usually tells a story and has rhymes. It has 14 lines and 10 syllables. The one we read in the class is Shakespeare sonnet 20. I have no idea what the sonnet is about when I first read it. In the class we discuss sonnet having 10 syllables, however, in this sonnet, it has 11 syllables in each line. There was an extra syllable in which it was weird. Professor Kolb says that a rhyme has genders; feminine and masculine. From the sonnet, every rhyme is feminine because it has two or more syllables. I thought the sonnet is about a woman but in the end, it was not. We discuss the meaning of the first 8 line which is mostly praising that person’s beauty. The author is telling us that the person is a woman but also not like a woman. So far, the gender of that person is ambiguous. In the next 4 line, we all figure out that the person is a man. The clue is that in this sonnet nature is a “she” and straight, so in the creation, she has an affection for it and therefore she added one extra thing. This tells us that, that extra thing made the person a man. The author says that in the last 2 line that he can be with all the women but still love him.Now going back to the 11 syllables the reason for that extra syllables is the one extra thing added to the person. It was a really interesting sonnet and the story behind it was just like a surprise. I thought I would not enjoy this event but in the end, it was really fun. The idea of searching for the meaning behind this sonnet was a great experience. It was also funny in how in the end we figured out that it was a “he”. Before coming to the event I had thought about leaving once it gets boring but instead, I stay to the end.