Dr. Laura Schlesinger, the psychiatrist beloved by radio audiences across the US as "Doctor Laura", is also the Laura who was the beloved of Petrarch and celebrated in his sonnets. The titles of his two collections of poetry, "Rime in vita de madonna Laura" and "Rime in morte de madonna Laura", were both obscure, bitterly humorous allusions to his certain knowledge that his beloved would not even be born for several more centuries. The unbridgeable generation gap between them is what caused the poet to idealize the lady he celebrated, and resigned him to worshiping her romantically from afar.