My first External Form poem is [What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why] by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is on page 1030-1031 of the Norton.This poem follows the structure of an Italian sonnet, divided into an octet and a sestet, although the rhyme scheme of the sestet varies from the standard (instead of cdecde, it is cdedce). The octet tells of the speaker's real life, and the sestet transitions into a metaphor for her ultimately solitary, lonely life.
At first the poem seems sort of romantic as it tells of all the affairs the speaker has had, but then the reader realizes that she does not remember the men behind the sex and that she has not had anything meaningful with these men. The first explicitly sad image comes in the third and fourth lines, when "the rain / is full of ghosts," the shadows of her forgotten lovers. After that point, the octet takes on a definitively more melancholic tone. The speaker has left these men behind, but they still "tap and sigh / upon the glass" looking for love. She admits that she does feel bad for them and the triviality of their fleeting relationships.
In the following sestet the reader sees a bare tree standing alone in the cold, barren winter. The tree does not remember all the birds that have left its branches, but once they are all gone, it realizes how quiet and lonely it is, which is how the speaker feels after all the men and one-night stands have faded away. The last two lines present the happy image of "the summer sang in me," but only for a little while, reminiscent of the momentary satisfaction of the speaker's affairs that leave her with nothing once they are over.
3 comments:
I agree that the beginning of the poem is romantic when the author recounts her affairs with multiple men, but the mood turns somber when she realizes there is nothing behind the sex. She compares herself to a "lonely tree" in the winter with the "birds having vanished one by one." This painted a very clear picture in my mind, letting me feel for the author. A bare tree in the dead of winter with no livestock around truly shows how lonely Millay feels. Later, Millay tells that "summer sang in [her]". The fact that she relates her mood swings to the seasons shows her incapability of holding a relationship and occassional seasonal affective disorder.
It’s also interesting that Millay only remembers the physical attributes of her past lovers. In the first lines she reminisces on the “lips” her “lips have kissed”. Instead of the emotions, names, or events, she solely mentions the tangible aspects. She continues and mentions the “arms that have lain under her head until morning”. Again, she is describing body parts rather than people. This emphasizes that she has forgotten the people and the relationships that occurred.
The Petrarchan model suits this sonnet because the first eight deal with her memories. Then the next six lines emphasize her solitude through comparisons with a “lonely tree” and the song that “sings no more”.
I found the "and where and why" part of the title of the poem to alluded to the tone of the poem. When the speaker compares herself to a solitary "lonely tree", this is the where/setting for her emotional self. I felt like she asks the questions of "why?" she had unattached, unemotional sex with so many. "In my heart there stirs a quiet pain" and "boughs more silent than before" reveals the true emptiness the speaker feels. After all the men leave her, she is left alone.
The ending lines, show a sad remembrance of what she felt like when she was w/someone, "I only know that summer sang in me. A little while, that in me sings no more" She was happy for a moment in life but that feeling left her long ago and now she is (metaphorically) a single tree in winter.
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