Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Valentine's Day Sonnet-a-Thon: Love is Not All, Edna St. Vincent Millay

I'm publishing one my favorite sonnets every few hours today!


Love Is Not All

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 resolutions power,
I might be driven to sell you love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

2 comments:

  1. So good! Have you read "Savage Beauty," Nancy Milford's biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay? It's terrific!

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  2. Yes! i went through a big ESVM stage my sophomore year in college, and read that and Daniel Epstein's "what my lips have kissed"-both excellent. Then I tried to write a bunch of Edna-style sonnets...that didn't work out so well :)

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