Comparing The Millay's Poems Dealing With Love

Edna St. Vincent Millay's two poems, 'What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why' and 'Love is not all,' both discuss emotions. The poet has used similar and more relatable instances in the two poems by describing the speaker's feelings. The author has used love and, in both instances, depicts love as some source of pain to soul and humanity. In both poems, the author contemplates on her past and how love brings only unhappiness to men and not otherwise.

She does this by sharing past experiences through the speaker.

Petrarchan is when the poem's turn occurs after the octave as we have here in “Love is Not All”. The Octave, which is the first eight lines she introduces the idea that love is not everything but in a rather more whimsical tone. Millay states, “not meat nor drink/ Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain, / Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink” (1-3). She continues to state, “Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath/ Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone” (5-6).

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The speaker emphasis her meaning declares that love isn’t magical or have paranormal qualities.

In the poems, the speaker has totally forgotten her past lovers and the reason why they were together. “What my lips have kissed, and where and why?” shows that she has no memories of the past life she was in during the times she was in love. The fact that the speaker cannot remember all these things, give me the symbolism that she is old.

Millay states “…what rms have lain/ Under my head till morning;” (2-3). She makes s reference to her romantic past has vanished. Millay use of literary concept becomes more complex through her poems the speaker’s feelings of remorse as well as a contradiction. As for in “Love is Not All”, Millay addresses love from a realistic perspective for her readers to relate. “Love is Not All” not only shows what love is, but what love is not as well. Some people believe that love is not something you can touch but knows when love touches you because you can feel it. Millay states “And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain/For unremembered lads that not again/Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.” (6-8). She expresses her loneliness in this excerpt. The tone nostalgia strikes as that these men are calling at her, but they are unremembered.

According to Eanes, in the poem “Love is Not All” she states, “Many people assign value of love by their willingness to die in their pursuit of it, but the speaker exhibits some hesitancy in committing to this idea, asserting that she does not know if she would sell or trade her love in order to survive.” Millay reminds us that love has an incredible power over us. She begins to wonder whether she might trade love for lives necessitates. She characterizes the lack of love can tempt us to make “friends with death” (7) just to revenge rejection from the loved ones. “Even in our most “difficult hour/ Pinned down by pain and moaning for release” (9 - 10). Millay also portrays she “might be driven to sell your love for peace/ Or trade her memories of this night for food.” (12-13). Millay uses her own examples to depict love is not everything, that it is essential to stay without love. She is opposing that is love more important than other things in the world, but she will never sit back to watch herself losing her love. But after the poet has already described love as incapable of sustaining life in “Love is Not All”, she turns her arguments and says that love might be the reason for one losing their life. She says that love is more valuable than even life itself. After she has introduced love as nonessential, the poet turns and retaliates. Millay states, “Yet many a man is making friends with death/even as I speak, for lack of love alone.” (7-8). She then conveys that love probably has a vast impact on us humans. According to Eanes, the author states “In fact, the use of “yet” introduces the idea that love must be of some value, especially since so many people risk their lives to attain it. After defining love by what it cannot do, the speaker insinuates that it at least has the power to compel men to die for it, and this suggests that perhaps love is more valuable that she originally thought”. The last thought of what people can do to attain love gives love a great attention that it of great value than it is meant to. The value is created by many who will never stay without it.

The significant difference between the two poems is the approach given when discussing the negatives of love. The procedure presented in the first poem, “what lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” is a bit of mild and wonderous tone. It provides a view of the speaker trying to remember what he kissed and where. The writer forgotten some events that took place in his life concerning love. On the other hand, “Love is Not All”, has an indirect tone towards the reader.

In this literary work, Millay puts out her point of view to show someone who experienced love and nothing good came out of it. She also laments that even though people have witnessed the disadvantages of love, they still fall for it and die for it. The two poems both communicate to readers the adverse effects of love. These two poems, with a similar theme of love, point out how, in the end, love leads to loneliness and pain. Personally, after reading the two poems, I have thought twice about my previous stand on love. It is indeed true that as much as love is essential to human beings, there are things it cannot do to make life easy. Instead, most people end up lonely and with a lot of pain. Edna St. Vincent used the two poems, “Love is Not All” and “What lips my lips kissed, and where, and why” to appeal the reader’s emotions to change their perspective about love.