Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poetry month is here, my friends! Spring is here! Jhumpa Lahiri's new book is here! Love may be in the air, but love of literature is even more pungent.

In honor of all this joy, I will be celebrating some of my favorite poets and poems. And to begin, here is a sonnet by the incomparable Edna St. Vincent Millay (Learn more about her here). I hold her very dear to my heart. Of all her poems- and there are many to treasure- it is her sonnets for which she is best remembered, in part because they are so masterful.

Millay was usually vigilant about meter, but here she veers off at times, as some lines are 11 syllables and some are ten. Because she strictly adhered to the norms of iambic pentameter, what do you, my fair readers, make of her choice here not to (and of course, it is a choice)? I hope we can engage in a dialogue about this and other poems in the weeks to come. Enjoy!

Love is Not All

by 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 cannot 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 need 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 may well be. I do not think I would.