A Critique on What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

Edna St. Vincent Millays What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, is an imagistic regression into the mind of a desensitized woman. It grazes the mystic ideals held within intimacy and sexual intercourse, while as well maintaining an key awareness of the authors bisexuality.Though, the relationship stigmas she touches on still book to human love affairs today, this poem can only be seen as revolutionary for its time period and the feminist movement. In this canvas I intend to show how this poem, among many of Millays other works, suck in attained cult status, due to their close correlation with her life.When Millay states What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, she is obviously referring to her past lovers (MIllay). The ideal that gives more value to this contestation is knowing that these lovers include men, women and highly acclaimed laureates. She goes on to use very emblematical imagery to signify the presence of these lost lovers.Terms like, ghosts, bir ds, and of course lips, are utilize to identify their presence throughout the poem. Millay likens herself to a tree, whose birds have vanished one by one (Millay). This human connection to nature adds to the poems intrigue and its mysticism. The entire occasion of her sullen regression is summed up at the end of the poem when she says,These sustain three stanzas sum up the main premise of the poem and also resemble the feelings of a woman who has been desensitized to intimacy. This is a very revolutionary agency for a woman to be in during the 1930s to 50s considering that the cultural expectations of the American women were very strict.Men feared that women would become unruly and sex crazed if they experienced sexual intercourse with more than one partner. Millays on the loose(p) nature and her edgy perspective definitely go against the grain of what gild expected. This rebellious nature in the poem can be at one time correlated to experiences in Millays real life as a bis exual.