Help help help!!!

[Pretty^Athens]

hey ppl, i need your help with analysing a poem by "Edna saint Vincent Millay"


IF I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again—
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man—who happened to be you—
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud—I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

what topics from the traditional sonnet are at work here? how are they altered? what accounts for this difference?

Thankyou

[Albion]

A few thoughts:
Based on Shakespearean model (3 quatrains plus a concluding couplet). Well rhymed. But each quatrain ends with a comma (although not one after "filled") thereby carrying the action into the following quatrain.

But each quatrain satisfies the Shakespearean convention of an introductory statement, development and fulfilment of a story. However, the couplet states no moral or summary except the unsentimental acceptance of a terrible event declining into bathos.

Couplet seems to be unrelated to sentiments expressed in preceding quatrains. Is it the thoughts of a stoic suppressing her feelings or of a totally dispassionate acquaintance or of a selfish preference for placing the trivial above human life?

Does the train leaving the station mark the abandonment of a previous life and/ or provide a metaphor for accepting the event and passing on to new experiences?


2nd quatrain
Repetition of "happened"
"At noon to-day" indicates it is an evening train

3rd quatrain
Enjambment "aloud"
Repetition of "Aloud"

Imperfect iambs eg

1st quatrain
That you were gone, not to return again—
3rd quatrain
With a more careful interest on my face
Couplet
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

PS This poem is still in copyright

[Pretty^Athens]

Thankyou Al

But i'm asking about the topic. not the poetic conventions.

You offerred me some help though
Thanks

[Albion]

What is a traditional sonnet? Petrarch, Shakespeare or any other poet in any combination? (I prefer the Petrarchen form). The only common factor is that all use only 14 lines, (in my view far too short to tell a story).

Sonnets are often associated with love: praise of a loved one; devotion to the loved one; distance from the beloved; thankfulness for having the acquaintance of the beloved; even suffering from the disdain of a rejected love.

Sonnets can be merely praise of some topic eg Wordsworth's Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room or they can be elegiac eg Wilde's The Grave of Keats

I had not encountered this one before, however. (Thank you for presenting the opportunity to discuss it).

Normally, one would expect the poem to originate from the admirer; but this is one from the, presumably, admired subject dismissively rejecting the admirers approach. This, itself, must make it a rare example in the normally gushing canon and probably qualifies it as feminine literature.

There is a touch of regal hauteur in her dismissal and of cold rejection which, themselves, contrast with the customary pleading associated with the suitor and the supplication normally to be found in sonnets. But it, at least, expresses the dismissal in direct rather than coded language.

The use of the blunt and brutal "killed" itself deviates from the usual pleasantries or euphemisms.

The initial sentiment seems to be elegiac spoken resignedly to somebody, maybe a lover but possibly an unwelcome intruder into her affections. But it soon descends into indifference made plain in 3rd quatrain.

This is not the usual sonnet subject but it is consonant with Edna's personality that one may detect in her other works. Eg Bluebeard and, to some extent, Lilacs where she values her independence from the intrusion of, and violation by, another and, thus, asserts her superiority over the other party.

There is no hint of praise in the piece and the recipient of such indifference would know that her feelings strictly excluded affection. But there is just a possibility, by the control exerted in 3rd quatrain, that she is suppressing some feeling by not being able to wring her hands "in such a place" ie to show her weakness of sentiment in public.

The sonnet is based on the supposition of a fatal accident rather than the event or quality normally elevated in the typical sonnet. Even the place is dismissed with indifference; and her casual discovery of the death in a mere newspaper would elicit not the least suffering. She would simply turn to the mundane without further thought.

The couplet is unimpressive as it is merely a continuation of the story rather than a moral; and leaves the reader dissatisfied by descending into the commonplace thereby foregoing an uplifting ending.

I suspect that this sonnet was a makeweight thrown off as an exercise in rhyming. It treats of the serious subjects of interpersonal relations and self assertion but chooses a melodramatic contrivance of the accident before dissolving into banalities in the last three lines.

PS What are your own thoughts?