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    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"
    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"
    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"
    Ebook41 pages30 minutes

    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 28, 2016
    ISBN9781535842648
    A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Edna St. Vincent Millay's "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" - Gale

      14

      What Lips My Lips Have Kissed

      Edna St. Vincent Millay

      1923

      Introduction

      Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnet What Lips My Lips Have Kissed was included in her 1923 collection of poems The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems. Most of the poems published in this collection were written between 1919 and 1920. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed is written in the same style as a Petrarchan love sonnet, with fourteen lines of rhymed poetry consisting of an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines of Millay's sonnet are one sentence that forms the octave. These lines suggest a remembrance of past love and romance and of a time that no longer exists. The final six lines are the sestet. This second complete sentence recognizes that there is no real resolution for the poet; instead, the sestet suggests a simple acceptance of a world that has changed.

      Although on the surface What Lips My Lips Have Kissed might seem to be a simple love sonnet, the themes of loss and of a time that has now passed are also reminiscent of the sense of loss that was so common after World War I, which at that time was known as the Great War. The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems was reissued in 2004 by Kessinger. What Lips My Lips Have Kissed is also included in Collected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1956), the most recent edition of which was reissued in 2011.

      Author Biography

      Millay was born February 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine. She was the oldest of three daughters born to Henry Dolman Millay, a school teacher and school superintendent, and his wife, Cora Buzzelle Millay. The marriage ended in 1899 when Cora Millay could no longer tolerate her husband's gambling. Although she had been trained to be an opera singer, Mrs. Millay began working as a practical nurse to support her three daughters. While their mother worked, the three Millay girls were often left to their own devices to entertain and feed and care for themselves. Although her childhood might be considered unconventional and was sometimes difficult, Millay occupied herself with reading and music. She took piano lessons and began to write poetry at age five. She had several of her poems published in a children's magazine, St. Nicholas, between 1906 and 1910. When Millay was a teenager, her mother encouraged her to enter her poetry in a contest sponsored by The Lyric Year, a literary anthology. Although her poems did not win a prize, one poem, Renascence, received much praise. After a school

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