Marcus hasn't returned to his seat, as if still quite ready to end the lesson for the day. Her question almost earns a smile, but he spares her, reaching out to pull the book nearer, and scan the page.

"Old fashioned," he says. "Which doesn't help its coherency. Sonnets make meanings in their rhythms as well as their words. Here--"

He points a line out by placing a finger next to it. "'I found, or thought I found, you did exceed the barren tender of a poet's debt'," he recites, in the tone of someone at least someone practiced in recitation of verse. "This is a poem about poetry's limit. But it contradicts itself in its existence."