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¶ … Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why
What is the speaker's emotional state in this poem? In the poem the poet is clearly melancholy and she frets over the fact that she has had so many lovers and lost them all. There have been so many lovers she can't recall them all but she did enjoy them, and she seems to have enjoyed the physical contact with them all. It doesn't matter that she cannot recall the locations of the trysts, or the reasons why she had them. The poet says she remembers the arms, and that is a clue for the reader that she can't recall whose arms they were, there were so many.
In the second line she moves from lips (a very intimate image) and kissing, to arms that she laid her head on all night (arms are not nearly as intimate as lips, but they are warm and loving and provide comfort). There is no indication that the lips and the kissing was any easier to remember than arms, but the implication (because lips are mentioned first) is that it is more painful to remember lost lips than arms.
Moreover, lips are more personal because they are attached to faces, the ultimate personal identifying factor in...
And a kiss is far more memorable than the touch of a hand or the wrapping round of arms. So lips are first remembered at times of loss, and arms come second, which is appropriate because they come in second place in the poem's list of priorities. By referencing arms seems the poet's way of admitting to one night stands, so there is some guilt thrown into the mix for good measure.
By the third and fourth lines the melancholy is moving into phantom moments of fear, regret and unnatural awakenings of past warm moments. Does the poet actually hear sounds that she believes are past lovers tapping on her window as ghosts, seeking to bedevil her and scare her? With rain falling the imagery plays into a movie-like drama; to wit, in every scary movie, or horror / thriller movie there is always rain and dreary climatic influences.
The poet has moved from regret and melancholy to near-terror with the tapping sounds (more like an Edgar Allan Poe theme than simply lost love). This is a very effective use of imagery.
Meanwhile, did the poet break some hearts along the way? Indeed, one answer to the question -- what images help…
Works Cited
Millay, Edna St. Vincent. "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why (Sonnet
XLIII)." Poets.org. Retrieved September 14, 2011, from http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15420.
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