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What Lips

Submitted by ellios2 on September 18, 2007

Category: Miscellaneous
Words: 1230 | Pages: 5
Views: 110
Popularity Rank: 86,444
Average Member Grade: N/A (Add a Comment / Grade this Paper)

Everything changes. Everyone goes through transitions in life. As people age, they begin to realize that every transition takes them one step closer to dying. Terrified that they have less life to look forward to, they turn retrospective, hoping to relive memories of past days of glory. When they find that their memories have become ghostly wisps of what was once so vivaciously real, they become depressed and discouraged. Edna St. Vincent Millay addresses this human condition in her Italian sonnet, ?What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why.?

In its first octave, the sonnet appears to be the disillusioned lament of a seasoned lover. The lines speak of lonely nights and ?lads? who will never lie with her again (7). But when the sonnet reaches the end of the octave, a second possible meaning appears. The sestet does not seem to speak of lovers, but of all things lost. When the sonnet is reexamined, it transforms from an elegy for lovers past, into a requiem for all that has been lost from memory.

It would be foolish, of course, to deny that the poem does not hold its most readily apparent meaning. It is quite possible that Millay sometimes wistfully looked back at the affairs of her youth. But that interpretation does not fully explain the poem. Her use of the Italian sonnet form leads the reader to expect an important turn in the poem?s narrative. When the change comes, her imagery depicts symbols of aging and loneliness. She pensively observes how ?in the winter stands the lonely tree? and remembers ?that summer sang in [her] a little while? but that it does not sing in her anymore (9, 13). These seasonal descriptions call to mind two opposing phases in people?s lives. In the summer, they enjoy their prime, old enough to do what they want, yet young enough to be very active. By the time the winter of life comes, all that was once young and vibrant has fallen off like dead leaves.

A feeling of dramatic loss is...

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