I have a project in english and i need to write a 3 page biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay along with analyzing 2 of her poems, a 7 minute presentation about her and her life and writings, and i need to think of 2 visual aids to use whether they be costumes, props, etc. I'm fine with the biography, that's really easy but i'm more worried about analyzing her poetry... i can analyze a novel until it spontaneously combusts but for some reason whenever i try to analyze poetry i fail epicly. So i was wondering if there were any poetry buffs that could A)Recommend some of her better poems. B)Help me analyze some of her poems. C)And help me think of visual aids to use xD. for the visual aides i can't really dress up like her cuz i'm a guy so i don't really own any dresses xD and i don't want to do some stupid thing like a poster... +rep for all who help and thanks for all who try
Alright then....analysis But first let's clarify some stuff. When I say the narrator, I mean the unseen person (whether real or fictional) who is narrating the poem, who is not necessarily the poet. I will refer to the poet as Millay. So basically the narrator very sad and depresses (duh). The first two lines are pretty simple to understand. Millay uses a similie to describe the sorrow the narrator feels, which also incorporates some imagery. Reading the first two lines, you can actually imagine the ceaseless rain and hear the beating. Diction would also be a good thing to mention. The word "ceaseless" means never ending, as in the narrator's pain in never ending and the word "beats" implies almost a violent pain stabbing the narrator's heart over and over. The next four lines (lines 3-6) now tell of how while the pain is great ("people twist and scream in pain"-line 3), a new day always comes again ("dawn will find them still again"-line 4). Life keeps moving on despite the grief one may feel: there is no beginning or ending to life ("this has neither wax or wane, neither stop nor start"-line 5). But when I say life I don't mean a person's literal life, but rather the passage of time and the continuation of existence from a universal viewpoint. Line seven starts to describe the mundane things of the narrator's life. Once again, despite the narrator's pain, life goes on and these everyday events ("people dress and go to town"-line 7) still occur. The world has not stopped just because of the narrator's sorrow. Then in line eight the narrator's like "well...I'm still here...just sitting in my chair." The depression which causes the narrator's thoughts to be "slow and brown"-line 9. Brown's a rather dull color so basically not much is going through the narrator's head, just the sadness. The narrator thinks in line eleven that nothing really matters anymore and yet the mundane things still appear. And yet despite all that, the narrator still cannot stop from thinking of the mundane things like what to wear ("what gown or what shoes I wear"-lines 11-12). Also, scansion is a good way to analyze a poem. The metrical foot used here is the trochee, which is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable like in the word people (people). Here's the mark up. Bold means the syllable is stressed. (01)Sorrow | like a | ceaseless | rain (02) Beats up|on my | heart. (03)People | twist and | scream in | pain, -- (04)Dawn will | find them | still a|gain; (05)This has | neither | wax nor | wane, (06) Neither | stop nor | start. (07)People | dress and | go to | town; (08) I sit | in my | chair. (09)All my | thoughts are | slow and | brown: (10)Standing | up or | sitting | down (11)Little | matters, | or what | gown (12) Or what | shoes I | wear. And here's also a more traditional way for marking meter: So notice that all the end of each line the trochee is incomplete: there's only the stressed syllable. This serves to empasize each of these words: rain, pain, again, wane, start, town, chair, brown, down, gown, wear. And these said word are also the more important point of the poem: the rain the symbolizes the pain, the dawn that will come again, the mundane things like going to town, the chair which the narrator sits in while all sad and depressed, the brown the describes the dullness of the narrator's thoughts, and and rather insignificant thoughts of what to wear. well...that only took like half an hour to put together and if (seriously...IF) I feel up to it, I just might analyze a second poem tomorrow or over the weekend
ZOMG I LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!! whenever i ask my teacher for help she always just tells me to figure it out and assumes i'm good at it since i can analyze novels( this is her first year teaching so she's getting the hang of it still) so i've tried to analyze some of the poems we've read and i always ended up with an epic fail xD But like now i can actually see the things to look for, i tried looking in my book and on google but could only find like summaries and whatnot xD. Anyways i love you that was going to my only real problem but now i have things to look for and i can keep them in mind when analyzing my second poem definitely + a buhzillion rep
haha we've been analyzing poetry for the past month or so in AP Lit so it's gotten to be pretty easy now There were a few things I didn't mention earlier that that in hindsight have become rather significant. The trochees are rather like heart beats through out the poem since the unstressed/stresses rhythm resembles the ba-bum of a heart. Another thing was that the rhyme scheme of the each stanza is abaaab. But the reader will naturally want the second line to rhyme with the first and the third and that creates a sense of unease throughout the poem.
ok thanks so much and now i have something to look forward to next year xD i'm taking language comp AP next year so id assume we're gonna do some poetry analyzing xD