A Look into Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Poem

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet â€Å"What lips my lips have kissed† brings out a miserable tune that where a woman is lamenting all the sweethearts she had lost. The decision of this specific sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay could be advocated by the way that perusers can without much of a stretch identify with it since it discusses a widespread topic, which is love. In spite of the fact that it stinks of disappointment and forlornness, the artist viably effectively utilized tangible images and words to portray the past occasions that happened in her life. In the sonnet, the speaker gives herself a role as a â€Å"lonely tree†. One essayist, Epstein (2001) broadcasts that this sonnet is â€Å"a summarizing of [the author’s] love life to date, and an event to summon the exemplary topics of requiem, the tempus fugit and the ubi sunt† (p. 139): What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why I have overlooked, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Also, in my heart there blends a peaceful agony For unremembered chaps that not once more Will go to me at 12 PM with a cry. In this way in the winter stands the desolate tree, Nor comprehends what winged creatures have evaporated individually, However knows its branches more quiet than previously. It appears that the speaker in the sonnet is a maturing woman implied by the songless tree. To be sure, she is an exemplification of dejection and lament, one that we may be enticed to peruse as a model of deserted womanhood, pitiful and frail. Male want in the affection poems where the lady as a speaker consistently disguises female shortcoming and wistfulness; frequently importuning, and devoured by want. In any case, when a male darling talks, it would suggest â€Å"authority of misery and, maybe more significantly, with the authority of convention†. At the point when Millay takes on the appearance of a male artist taking on the appearance of a lovesick lady, the â€Å"sense of where genuineness meets motion and how authority adjusts itself to sexual orientation is confused† (Freedman, 1995, p. 113). In its structure, the sonnet is named a work that has a specific rhyming example: abbaabba cdedce. The sonnet utilizes similar sounding word usage and sound similarity. It is additionally rich in normally happening images, which all perusers can without much of a stretch interface. The sonnet starts with a one-sentence octave that presents the circumstance wherein the storyteller finds herselfâ€inside a house during the downpour, thinking back about her past and overlooked darlings. The modified sentence structure of the initial two lines nearly recommends an inquiry instead of an announcement: what number darlings were there? The similar sounding word usages in the primary line furthermore stress the dreariness of the narrator’s sexual experiences. Simultaneously, the ideal tense imply that this period of her life has been finished, and the body part imageries of lips, arms, and head infer her good ways from the experience. In the third line, Millay moves to the current state, where she depicts the recollections of her sweethearts (utilizing an apparition allegory) stimulated by the downpour, an image for agony and depression. These are the sweethearts that â€Å"tap and sigh†. The storyteller appears to be hinting that the darlings themselves are unimportant. For a similar explanation, â€Å"Millay picks an allegory that indicates anonymity and absence of welcome and reverberates with the particular time of the 12 PM hour†. The focal expression in this segment is â€Å"quiet pain,† a â€Å"almost-paradoxical expression proposing that the storyteller's misery is quieted or accepted† (Schurer, 2005). As implied by the progress ahead of tenses, Millay gives the perusers a slight look at things to come also: However, certainly, sheâ laments everything and she anticipates no closeness later on. At long last, the female storyteller appears not keen on the character of her sweethearts as in the memory of the feelings they permitted her to experience.â Despite the bitterness and lament, the storyteller introduced harmony or recovery as a â€Å"faint reverberation of the feeling of affection from her youth† (Schurer, 2005). Notwithstanding the desolate topics and images, we can feeling of uniformity in adoration; to the interest by ladies that they be permitted to enter the universe of experience and investigation in affection which men have since a long time ago possessed. Notwithstanding, Millay doesn't sound to be any women's activist to contend for that correspondence. She just makes it inconspicuous, shows it in this sonnet and transforms it into magnificence. Works Cited Epstein, Daniel Mark. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York: Holt, 2001. Freedman, Diane P., ed. Millay at 100: A Critical Reappraisal. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1995. Schurer, Norbert. â€Å"Millay's what lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why†, The Explicator, 63.2 (Winter 2005): 94-97.