analysis

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Analysis
The sonnet "Love Is Not All" exemplifies the poet's views on love through its message that love is of secondary importance because it cannot provide for physical needs. However, the speaker is uncertain if he would give up love for bodily comfort. This message is emphasized by the use of poetic devices, including rhyme, repetition and alliteration. "Love Is Not All" takes the form of a sonnet, with fourteen lines of rhymed iambic pentameter. Edna Saint Vincent Millay combines elements of the two most common sonnet forms (see Structure ) in the poem. "Love Is Not All" uses the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet; however, the turn of a Shakespearean sonnet occurs after the three quatrains. The turn in "Love Is Not All" is after the eighth line, which divides the sonnet into two sections: the octave and the sestet. This division is characteristic of Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets.

In the first eight lines of Millay's sonnet, the speaker points out all that love cannot do. Love is neither food nor sleep. Love cannot shelter a person. Love cannot heal; the speaker stresses each incurable ailment by repeating the letter "B" in "breath... blood... bone" (Effinger). Millay's speaker also repeats "not" and "nor" as he lists every way in which love is lacking. The negative form and the arguments pile on the reader, creating a compelling picture of why love is unnecessary. The speaker then abruptly stops using the negative. He ends the octave by saying "yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone." The switch draws attention to these two lines (Ritzenthaler), which foreshadow the final idea of the poem: that perhaps love is more important than bodily comfort. The negative form is not used again until the sonnet's last sentence.

In the sestet, the speaker focuses on his own opinions by considering whether he would trade love for physical comforts. At first, the speaker seems willing to trade his love, as indicated by “it well may be…I might be driven to sell your love for peace”. However, the speaker acknowledges the power of love in an emotional discussion of pain and desire. In lines 10-12, beginning with "pinned down by pain," and ending with "peace", Millay alliterates the “P” sound, a choppy consonant which accentuates the strength of the feelings that are mentioned (Simon). Despite these potent emotions, the speaker uses ambiguous phrases that play up his uncertainty. In the last line of the poem, the speaker finally concludes that he would not trade away love, but he again sounds irresolute. He says “I do not think I would” rather than a definite phrase, such as “I would not trade love.” This short, complete idea is a powerful statement of the speaker's uncertainty. "Love Is Not All" contains only four sentences. Placing two in the last line draws the reader's eye.

“Love is Not All” is a typical poem by Edna Saint Vincent Millay, although not typical for her time period. Millay lived and wrote during the 1920s and 1930s, a period now labeled "modernist". Many of her contemporaries, such as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, were experimenting with creating unique, new poetry forms, yet Millay never participated in this experimentation. Many of her poems, such as “Love is Not All”, are in a traditional sonnet form. Though “Love is Not All” is a mixture of two types of sonnets, the structure, meter and rhyme scheme are all conventional (see Structure ) (__Critical Survey of Poetry__).

Despite these old-fashioned forms, Millay incorporates modern ideas into her poems. One critic from the 1930s wrote that, "without discarding the forms of an older convention, [Millay] speaks the thoughts of a new age" (__The Poetry Foundation__). Millay often challenges a highly romanticized view of love by introducing a more realistic take in her poems. “Love is Not All” is an example of this tendency (__Greenwood Encyclopedia)__. The contrast between Millay and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who wrote sonnets during the 1800s, is extraordinary ("Elizabeth Barrett Browning"). In //Sonnets from the Portuguese//, Browning writes “that love, as strong as death, retrieves [life] as well [as God]” (Browning, Sonnet XXVII), and “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height of my soul” (Browning, Sonnet XLIII). Browning suggests that love is all-encompassing and as strong as God, clearly a romanticized view of love. These lines are very different from Millay’s “Love is Not All”, which argues that love does not provide the physical necessities required for life (__Women of Words)__. The poets’ views are almost directly opposite (Simon). Yet Millay’s “Love Is Not All” remains thoughtful about the vitality of love. Unlike many modernist poets, who reject older ideas, Millay successfully fuses romantic opinions with a more realistic view of love’s power. In this way, Millay is unconventional from a traditional standpoint and a modernist standpoint (__Critical Survey of Poetry)__.

As we have shown, "Love is Not All" challenges the romantic ideals of love that one might expect in a sonnet. Millay's use of emotions and particularly her portrayal of love in "Love Is Not All" is similar to many of her other poems. Love is not all everyone needs, but the speaker recognizes its importance. He is not certain if he would ever give it up.