 The symbolic focus of that coincidence is the story of Daphne's transformation into Apollo's tree.Petrarch made the story in the "Metamorphoses" the dominant myth of the longest poem in the sequence, Canzoniere 23.This poem is a virtuoso sequence of a half dozen Ovidian myths, from Apollo and Daphne to Actaeon and Diana, offered up as figuration of the poet's own subjective experience; it has become known as the canzone della metamorfosi, a sustained “lyricization of epic materials,” which effectively rewrites Ovid's long poem as erotic and professional autobiography.