A Look into Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Poem

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet â€Å"What lips my lips have kissed† summons a tragic tune that where a woman is lamenting all the darlings she had lost. The decision of this specific sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay could be legitimized by the way that perusers can undoubtedly identify with it since it discusses a general subject, which is love. In spite of the fact that it stinks of disappointment and forlornness, the writer adequately effectively utilized substantial 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) announces 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 epitaph, 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What's more, in my heart there blends a peaceful torment For unremembered chaps that not once more Will go to me at 12 PM with a cry. Accordingly in the winter stands the desolate tree, Nor realizes what winged creatures have evaporated individually, However knows its limbs more quiet than previously. It appears that the speaker in the sonnet is a maturing woman connoted by the songless tree. In reality, she is an embodiment of forlornness and lament, one that we may be enticed to peruse as a model of relinquished womanhood, regrettable and feeble. Male want in the affection pieces where the lady as a speaker consistently disguises ladylike shortcoming and wistfulness; regularly importuning, and devoured by want. Notwithstanding, when a male sweetheart talks, it would infer 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 writer taking on the appearance of a lovesick lady, the â€Å"sense of where truthfulness meets motion and how authority adjusts itself to sexual orientation is confused† (Freedman, 1995, p. 113). In its structure, the sonnet is delegated a piece 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 associate. 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 sweethearts. The reversed sentence structure of the initial two lines nearly proposes an inquiry instead of an announcement: what number darlings were there? The similar sounding word usages in the principal line also 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 suggest her good ways from the experience. In the third line, Millay moves to the current state, where she portrays the recollections of her darlings (utilizing an apparition allegory) stirred by the downpour, an image for anguish and sadness. These are the sweethearts that â€Å"tap and sigh†. The storyteller appears to be intimating that the darlings themselves are unimportant. For a similar explanation, â€Å"Millay picks a representation that alludes to anonymity and absence of welcome and reverberates with the particular time of the 12 PM hour†. The focal expression in this area is â€Å"quiet pain,† a â€Å"almost-ironic expression recommending that the storyteller's sorrow 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, verifiably, sheâ laments everything and she anticipates no closeness later on. At long last, the female storyteller appears not inspired by the personality of her darlings as in the memory of the feelings they permitted her to experience.â Despite the pity and lament, the storyteller introduced harmony or recovery as a â€Å"faint reverberation of the feeling of adoration from her youth† (Schurer, 2005). Regardless of the forlorn topics and images, we can feeling of balance in affection; to the interest by ladies that they be permitted to enter the universe of experience and trial in adoration which men have since a long time ago possessed. In any case, Millay doesn't sound to be any women's activist to contend for that fairness. She just makes it inconspicuous, shows it in this sonnet and transforms it into excellence. 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.