What a muse meant

A sonnet is a prison, I suppose,
Where, if you're lucky, inspiration works.
Its well-turned soil yields subtlety and quirks,
Both spikiness and beauty like a rose.
This straiter jacket, far away from prose,
attracts the Keats, the Shakespeares and the Jerks.
In rigid structure, sometimes, glory lurks,
And sometimes glory gets a bloody nose.

So if you want to realize your jail,
Reflect in verse your constrained liberty,
That cell of fourteen bars speaks in your stead.
But can you make it sing instead of wail?
and dance to life an unexpected glee -
do that, and then your sonnet might get read.