Poetry of Love

March, 18 2012


                                                           

                                                               Edna St. Vincent Millay
                                                     photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1933
                                                                       by Wikipedia

This week we are studying symbolism of poetry in class, so i decided to write an entry on Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why", which was published in 1923.

First, here is the paraphrase of the poem:

         

        "What lips my lips have kissed, and where and why", describes a woman who revives memories of her past lovers. The main image of the poem can be described as passionate like for example ‘What lips my lips have kissed …''arms have lain under my head till morning…'lads that … turn to me at midnight with a cry...We can also see images of nature like "lonely tree", "birds", "summer", winter. This poem is a sonnet composed of two parts called the octave of eight lines and the sestet of six lines. In the last six lines of the poem the speaker feels that she would never experience the same passion of love because she has grown too old for it.

As we can see the speaker of the poem is a woman. I think this poem is intended specifically for women because of the delicate and thoughtful way is written. 

The tone of the poem is sad, guiltiness  but at the same time it shows us passion.

This poem has metaphor, as we can see in line 9 when she says, "Thus in the winter stands the lonely three", the speaker is representing herself as the as a lonely three. 

I think the main themes of this poem are loneliness, emotions last even though memories vanish, recall memories of happy experiences with lovers of the past .We can see that even after all the experiences that she has had with many lovers through her life, she always ended up alone and the time she had was not enough to find someone to love.

here is the link of the poem:  http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-lips-my-lips-have-kissed-and-where-and-why/