Sand and Pearls

People often see women at the turn of the century as downtrodden and powerless creatures, or worse, the female artists and poets of the era as simpering idealists, heavily romantic, with their heads in clouds of angst.  In this sonnet, Edna St. Vincent Millay “puts the boot in” to all that with a poem as modern as it is scalpel-like.  That her message is in sonnet form serves only to highlight its irony.

This is a sonnet about lust.

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 uon my breast:

so subtly is the fume of life designed,

to clarify 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.

– Edna St. Vincent Millay