What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, And Where, And Why

Question 1

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed — Context:

Answer 1

• Edna St. Vincent Millay was a well-known feminist poet and she was infamous for having relationships with men and women and was in an ‘open’ marriage.
• She embodied many attributes of the hedonistic individuals of the 1920s Jazz Age in America. She was a morphine addict.
• She was a fiercely independent woman when, in many ways, women were still treated like children in a patriarchal society.
• She may be drawing on her own experience of having a life of casual lovers for this poem.

Question 2

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed — Rhythm:

Answer 2

The poet’s use of Iambic Pentameter adds a conversational feel to the poem, as if the speaker is confiding her emotions to the reader in an intimate way.

Question 3

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed — Rhyme:

Answer 3

The Octet uses a traditional ABBA rhyme scheme for, yet the Sestet departs from the expected CDE or CDCDCD rhyme scheme. The rhyme scheme becomes distorted, much like the speaker’s fading memories of her lovers.

Question 4

What Lips My Lips Have Kissed — Form:

Answer 4

Petrarchan Sonnet

• The poet’s choice to use this form emphasises the theme of love.
• The Octet is quite reflective , while the Sestet is more remorseful.
• Unconventionally, the sonnet discusses having many different lovers, rather than praising a single lover.

• Traditionally in Petrarchan Sonnets, the Octet presents an issue/conflict and it is resolved in the Sestet after the Volta (the turning point, usually line 9). However, the distortion of the traditional rhyme scheme suggests that the speaker’s issues/conflict cannot be resolved. She acknowledges and accepts the reality of her situation.