"Sonnet XXX" from Fatal Interview by Edna St. Vincent MIllay

Edna St. Vincent Millay lived hard and recklessly. There wasn't much this woman didn't try during here lifetime. She lived a life of experimentation, poetic and not. If you ever get the chance, her biography Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford is definitely worth the read. The story of her life was difficult to delve into at times because of the extreme contrasts between her highs and lows. One of the most interesting things about her, as well as many who are true poetic artists, is the amazing juxtaposition of her rebellious, reckless life and her technical and precise approach to her poetry,  In Fatal Interview, she crafts 52 sonnets.  The sonnet finds its beauty in the restraint and technical precision needed to craft this type of poem. It is often easy for my students to recognize the technical qualities of a sonnet, but today it was so much fun to get them to dig deep into the artistry of her diction and figurative language and her themes. Here is the text her poem, "Sonnet XXX" or "Love Is Not All."


Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 

The best part of class today was to see the classes split into two pretty distinct factions. There were those who really "got it." I don't mean they understood the poem. I mean they were able to truly immerse themselves into what the speaker was saying about love. In their own young understanding of love, they truly felt the words of the speaker. We had some good discussion. They stepped up and dug deep. In regards to the speaker, I love how she sets it up as if she is going one direction, flips it, then heads in the completely opposite direction. At first, love is not everything, it does not have the power to sustain life as food, drink, sleep, and shelter do. Love is non-essential. BUT or as the speaker says, "Yet," existence is an empty death-like experience without love. When humans live lacking love, there is no real life. Even in the midst of absolute despair or the depth of need with no resolve or extreme anxious restlessness or starvation, the speaker would not be willing to trade love or the memory of one particular night for any of the things that love was NOT in the beginning of the poem.  Let us remember this. Let us love. Let us not live lives that are tomblike and lonely and empty. Let us reach out and sustain and love one another.