Edna St. Vincent Millay's My Lips Have Kissed, And Why

Better said, those swallows and honeysuckles existed only because of that romance that just ended. And when the poet uses the simile "…drops of dew… like tears of the day," it also symbolizes the ending of the love affair.

The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" is a Petrarchan sonnet consisting of an octave and a succeeding sestet. The octave includes concrete examples to demonstrate the three main themes of this poem: change, loss, and loneliness. The sestet gives a metaphorical approach to the themes, so as to further represent the change in the speaker's life. The author also contrasts the first and second stanzas with each other in order to demonstrate further the theme of change found throughout this poem. The tone which envelopes this poem is one of somberness and melancholy, as the speaker describes how she feels now that her lovers have gone.

SUMMARY: In Kelly Cherry’s poem titled “Alzheimer’s” she describes a man in front of his house who had just returned from the hospital. Cherry writes about the theme of losing a loved one which is shown in the last sentence of the poem. Cherry lists the items in his suitcase and describes the scenery around him. The man then recalls memories he has when he looks at the house. He remembers building the walkway, planting the rhododendron, and driving his truck. He does not, however, remember his wife who is standing in the doorway.

In both “Mad Girl’s Love Song” and “Denouement”, two poems written by the twentieth-century American poet, Sylvia Plath, there is a distinct theme of codependency. She shows this through the two different reactions in her poems to the loss of a loved one, whether they were lost through abandonment or death. In each poem she uses impossible imagery, the voice of her speakers, and overly dramatic emotional statements to show this. The two poems share much in common, but they are by no means the same story despite presenting with the same theme of codependent love.

One versus, I found interesting was “we chased our pleasures here, dug our treasures there, but can you still recall the time we cried ”, explains he is remembering the time he had with a girl and specifically during this time when something goes bad happens. Something upsetting and unfaithful happen with him was with the girl. By his perception that made him cry. He felt that by just feeling this is caused by feelings are being disturbed. The girl probably made him shed to tears.

Moving on from a past relationship is difficult for most people. It can be difficult to get past all the wonderful things that was once seen; however, some people look at moving as knowing what they do not need in their life such as certains actions or knowing their new criteria. The speakers in these two poems are from the poems My Last Duchess by Robert Browning and My Ex-Husband by Gabriel Spera. The speakers of these poems are both obsessing over their exes emotionally and personality wise, that they are still talking about them while trying to find a new connection move on into a new relationship.

The speaker of the poem and her “companion” have died for beauty and truth, respectively. Though both hope to be somehow immortalized through the nobility of their deaths, the meaning is diminished because they are both dead. Eventually time causes moss to grow over the lips of the

Teasdale’s four stanza poem, “New Love and Old” characterizes love as a ghost walking through the night. She personifies the things her lover used to tell, saying they “Ranged themselves reproachfully / Round

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 the last two lines, we learn that the memory is not of the two of them together, but primarily of his sister, Emmeline, who "feared to brush the dust from off its wings." The memory seems like it should be a happy one, but the language of the beginning of the poem tells us otherwise, and we are left wondering what has happened between the memory and now.

Before the death of the poem’s protagonist, she tells her lover, “Better by far you should forget and smile“ Than that you should remember and be sad.” The parallelism signifies the woman’s compassionate attitudes towards the male counterpart of the relationship. Even though she is going to leave him, she does not want him to reminisce the depressed feelings of her death. Instead she hopes that the man could move on from her and live a happy life even without her presence. An enjambment is also used in the two lines to signify that the woman’s love for the man is continuous, her love for him will never decline even after her death. Based on the depiction of the woman’s considerate manners to her lover, ‘Remember’ can be seen presenting romantic love in a positive

The only way to escape and replenish his soul is through writing poetry. In line 15, the speaker doesn’t care about the reason behind her absence, all that’s important to him is that "the night is shattered, and she is not with me." (16). When the speaker hears someone singing in the distance, he bring back up the fact that he is alone. Thus, he concedes “my soul is not satisfied.” (18) In lines 19 and 20 the speaker communicates his aching to reunite with his lover. His sight and his heart is trying to find her, but yet, he is still alone. In stanza 6, the speaker declares that he no longer loves her, but he admits he loved her greatly in the past. In the final two lines, the speaker is determined to erase the memory of her in an attempt to ease his pain, insisting that this poem will be “the last verses that I write for her.” (32).

The theme of reflections is something frequently explored in literature. It is truly a powerful force. It can bestow courage, feelings of warmth, and even overwhelm you and this is exactly what the below six poets did by manipulating their personal and emotional reflections to generate an emotive impact on us by using a variety of literary devices to present to us a ‘window’ into their pasts. Alice Walker (Poem at Thirty-Nine), U. A. Fanthorpe (Half past Two) and D. H. Lawrence (Piano) have all

Therefore this can justify how much the speaker wants her lover to remember her. Lines 9-10: ‘Yet if you should forget me for a while and afterwards remember, do not grieve.’ As I had mentioned earlier in the previous lines, the speaker had seemed to be concerned and worried about her lover forgetting her, however according to line nine, the speaker mentions the word ‘forget’. Lines 11-12: ‘For if the darkness and corruption leave a vestige of the thoughts that once I had.’ ‘Darkness and corruption’ that are declared in these lines are a reference to death. Darkness here refers to, as nobody knows what happens after death. The word vestige used is very significant. It demonstrates something leftover. Therefore it describes and refers to things the speaker had said and that her lover will one day recall after her death. Lines 13-14: ‘Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.’ The speaker here is saying that even if some vestige of her thoughts remain, it is better for her lover to forget her and by satisfied rather remember her and be miserable and