Hello everyone,
I personally enjoyed reading “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why” by Edna St. Vincent Millay just because during my teenage years I had a sudden urge to write poems and one such poem I recall writing had a similar emotional aura as this poem does. Though my poems always started off romantically and passionately, but ended in dire sadness and darkness which would flood the positive energy away. Off topic, I know…Sorry!
About this poem, at first, I had a hard time understanding the following passages;
“but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight”
and
“Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:”
I read the poem twice and then asked myself the general questions that are found in the “How to Read a Poem” article. Some of the questions I asked myself are;
- Who is the speaker?
- What circumstances gave rise to the poem?
- What situation is presented?
- Who or what is the audience?
- What is the tone?
- What form, if any, does the poem take?
Shortly after I was able to answer most of the questions. Thanks to the same article, I learned to not rush my way into a poem and force-understand it. I decided to take it easy, sit back, and really try to place myself in the speakers position. And when I did that, it clicked right away. The entire poem started to make sense. I was able to “Complete” the poem by extracting the meaning out of it. I found out that the speaker is a woman who, during the summer months in her younger days enjoyed intimacy with a few partners whom she addresses as birds and unremembered lads. And now she has grown older and has lost her youth. She refers to herself as a lonely tree that stands outside in the cold winter. And as she can not turn back time, she ends the poem by stating that the summer song that sang in her, is no longer alive within her. I love the speakers writing style because it is so similar as to how I would have expressed the same emotions and thoughts.
