April is National Poetry Month!

[cerusee]

My sis and I went to the first panel of the Graven Images: Religion in Comics conference this morning, but the damn thing started at 8:30am, my sis had a migraine, I hadn't had any coffee, and one of the organizers hinted that he was hoping to publish the conference papers, so we bailed. We went off and ate good omelettes in a BU-area pizza joint with bad service, then went to Downtown Crossing to buy In Style and Conversation Pieces at Borders, intending to lounge on the Boston Common with huge cups of coffee and peruse spring fashions, but it's April in Massachusetts, and the hot sun and clear blue sky turned into a thunderstorm, so we just went home instead.

This is why I am too lazy to look for a new poet today. Those of you who have octopedingenue friended will have already read her entry on Conversation Pieces pairing Millay's sonnet "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" with an answering piece. If you thought Millay was ruthless to her ex-lovers in that poem, read "I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed."

Both of these sonnets are from the same volume, The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, published in 1923.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.


I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.


I recently read a paper on Millay and Vanity Fair that described how she was...um...oh hell, she slept around a lot. Would quite literally go from one lover to a meeting with another (and openly comment on it), once slept with two lovers once, was bisexual (which I already knew), and had an open marriage. Somehow, this seems not only plausible, but after reading some of her more ruthless verse, unsurprising.

Comments

[octopedingenue]

Oh, Edna. One of her biographies I read was like...a very elegant trainwreck of sexiness. All of which would mean nothing if her poetry were not stunning, but it is, and she is the same woman who wrote both "I shall forget you presently, my dear" and "Love is not all, it is not meat nor drink" and a thousand other poetic contradictions in one small body.

If I'd been her contemporary I think I would have fallen violently in love with her and hated her with equal fury and had no choice in either. As it is I would like to steal a fraction of her talent and passion.

I am glad you found Conversation Pieces! I hope you enjoy it.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad I'm NOT her contemporary, and can look back on her life and her poetry with a sense of history. I can't imagine being able to keep her personality and her lifestyle and her poetry in any kind of perspective without it.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Ouch. Burn.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I know, innit?

On a personal level, it's cruel. In the overall context of male/female relationships and the historical position of women poetry (objects), Millay's unapologetic commitment of this sentiment to poetry is pretty goddamned impressive, maybe even admirable.