Edna St. Vincent Millay What My Lips Have Kissed

Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".

The last few lines seem to attribute her depression to her age, and maybe the fact that she never got to enjoy her childhood, her young years, and she despises seeing herself grow old in the reflection of the lake.

The Winter is the opposite of summer, during the winter not only does the winter change but the town's appearance. The houses that once looked artificial were exposed and looked abandoned. “Winter comes down savagely over a little town on the prairie...The roofs, that looked so far away across the green treetops...they are so much more uglier then when their angles were softened by vines and

The seasons are part of the mother's life, while the father goes through life as if all were winter. The mother runs her house according to the seasons. She grows "miraculous gardens and magnificent flowers…"(132), and during berry picking season, "She would walk miles…"(132).  Growing gardens, flowers and picking berries are seasonal activities. Every flower and fruit has its cycle during the year, which alludes how the mother lived through this. The importance of the seasons as part of the mother's life is presented even in the end of the story when the narrator says that the "[mother] looks through her lonely window onto the ice of winter…"(140). Therefore, she is alone gazing out the window, waiting for her death, which is symbolized by the winter. On the other hand, for the father all the seasons are the same. All of them are winter. The narrator describes his father, "with blue eyes flossing like clearest ice

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet, “What lips my lips have kissed and where and why,” is about being, physically or mentally jaded, and thinking back to the torrid love of one’s youth. The “ghosts” that haunt her are the many lovers of her past; she’s specifically trying to remember them all. She recalls the passion she experienced and how there was a certain feeling within herself. Millay shows this through her vivid imagery, use of the rain as a literary device and by paralleling herself with a lonely tree.

The poem “That Winter,” is the seasonal poem describing the environment has changed by using imagery. It’s impressive for describing the poem with imagery. From lines 1 to 6 on “That Winter” poem:

The poem “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” is quite compelling though a bit baffling at first glance. The writer of this poem is Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose an American poet and playwright. Millay was born in Maine into a poverty-stricken family. Her mother was a fan of classic literature varying from William Shakespeare to John Milton and would read these poets’ works to her daughters. Ultimately, inspiring Millay into becoming a poet herself. In 1923, Millay won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry being the third female to win this award. In the poem, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, an explanation of the poem’s meaning, form, and pattern will be made in order to understand this writer’s work.

This unfulfilled desire for joyfulness causes her to think of happiness as a delusion, a sign of her descent into madness. On the other hand, the speaker in “Spinster” longs for control. She contrasts the winter “scrupulously austere in its order of white and black ice and rock, each sentiment within border with the spring’s “rank wilderness of fern and flowers… [and] sloven[ous]”. This person views the disorderly nature of spring as disgusting and admires winter’s orderliness.

In the second stanza it is the semantic field of cold: ‘winter’, ‘ice’, ‘naked’, ‘snow’. All these lexical items give us a feeling of cold which evokes loneliness, unknown, fear.

Fine Line Between Love and Death Even though some people think that men dominated poetry, during the nineteen twenties Edna St Vincent Millay gave a feminist point of view on topics such as love, death, the loss of a loved one, and depression. The mentioned topics are engaging and coincide with the one another, because to love and feel the loss of love can be compared to death. These four topics are a basis for a lot of Millay's poems. Millay wrote poems that asserted her feelings and brought recognition to these topics in a new light, an unconventional point of view.

In the poem What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why by Edna Millay, is a poem that was released in 1920 that exhibit clear and present themes and stylistic devices that were associated with the Romantic period from 1790-1850. A basic run down of the poems story is about a woman or possibly a man who is reminiscing about his or her past lovers. Now in the present, they are all alone and forgotten what it was like to be loved. After some years of searching for love, they finally accept that they will now forever be alone. Just reading through this poem once, it shows many elements of a Romantic poem, that it could be looked at as homage to poems written in the Romantic period.

The poem uses a first person point of view to the report the thoughts of a character awaiting the arrival of a winter storm, which has been signaled by the building of clouds, the “pressing tide” and the “turning wind” (11. 1-3). While she prepares for the storms arrival. The character reflects in “winter at sea and winter in the soul” (1. 16), suggesting that something in her past has forced this life of isolation. The choice to face the storm alone has been forced upon her. As readers, we are drawn into this situation by sympathizing with the characters thoughts and actions: and so the poem leads us to ask questions about our own

Millay, in her early years of adulthood, was a woman of the night. She slept around and was quiet content with herself, however; this lifestyle would be her demise. She compares herself to a barren tree in winter, with no leaves, and birds that have come and gone. A barren tree usually emanates this feeling of loneliness, and having no leaves, it loses its aesthetic appeal and does not attract much attention, more so in winter. This is the case with the narrator (Millay) in, “What My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why” because, Millay is aging. That period of time where she would bed with many men is done, and those men are like birds, they have come and gone from the tree. So now, she is left all alone, only to wish for one more bird to come to her. It makes sense, using nature's change to symbolize herself, since summer is full of life, but winter is cold, harsh and desolate.

in both of the poems. Both of the poems talk about winter and how the environment has brought

Winter often symbolizes death, creating an ominous setting to begin the story. The connotation of the words “frigid” and “overcast” establishes a despairing tone. Therefore, the allusion to the events of 1975 that make him “what [he is] today” appears to be foreboding.