When a poet wants to speak, he speaks. When a poet wants to cry, he writes a poem. And it is the emotion of a man that we read. It is much like touching an open heart.
It seems to me that in her poem What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why Edna St. Vincent Millay is trying to convey the feeling of a dim sadness. What kind of sadness is that, I wonder. Is it about a loss? Or a painful memory? Or
As I read the poem a strange vision of a lady lost or forgotten comes to my mind. She must be recollecting the sounds she used to hear, the colors she used to see, and the things she used to say.
Or could it be that she just doesn’t want to remember all these things?
Memories are a dangerous thing. They grab you and drag back to the past full of wistful regrets, and they will never let you go unless you tear yourself apart. “… but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight that tap and sigh.” (Kennedy 615) These ghosts fill one with fear of making the same mistake, of living further on, of making a decisive step. They touch your neck with their cold fingers and say that it could be better to stay in the past. It is safer, you know. It is not so scary, because you already know the mistakes you will make, and you won’t have to say good-bye. It is cozy as a pillow on the bed, inviting you to rest on it like a daydream believer.
It gives you what people fear most and what they desire most.
It gives dreams.
But the past is tricky. It can steal your time into a miserable nothing, and leave you in the haunted memories. And that is where the circle of life spins in a deadlock.
The poem is shot through with the tragic anticipation of the inevitable. But the author is calm and reserved, a little mournful, though. That is the very essence of the poem. The emotions have gone. The author depicts the soul empty as a barren field, and lonesome as a crow. It is clear that there is no way back and all the possible decisions and choices have been made: “I only know that summer sang in me/ A little while, that in me sings no more.” (Kennedy 615)
I dare say that Edna St. Vincent Millay has expressed the very meaning of being lonely and forgotten. Every word and every comma is a hear-me-cry song that makes one think of whether a real misery is a pack of troubles or the absence of anything good, or bad, or fantastic, or terrible.
What also struck me was that plural for the word “love”: “I cannot say what loves have come and gone…” (Kennedy 615). That peculiarity makes the very notion and sense of love smaller, more trifle-like, more insignificant, and more nothing-like. That must have been a terrible disappointment that could lead to such treating love and everything connected with it. In fact, the author’s life was rather complicated, too (Milford), and her personal pains and sorrows were reflected in the poem so brightly that it captures at once and speaks to the reader’s compassion.
I would like you to pay special attention to the fact that the poem does not have the growing tension so typical for the American poems. It does not follow the rules of the tempo, and that is where the key to its charming wistfulness is. It leaves the reader with a slight air of surprise and the feeling of incompleteness, as if he or she has broken the promise given a long time ago.
This promise is one that people give to themselves as they taste the choking grief. It is inevitable as the fall, and it is just as impossible to keep as the storm raving. And that promise says that you will never expect too much not to fall into despair, and that you will never ask for too much no to get the refusal, and that you will never, ever – well, what’s the use. Anyway, you will break it.
Works Cited
Kennedy, Joseph Charles, Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. New York: Longman. 2005
Milford, Nancy. Savage beauty: the life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. 2002. Print