Sonnet Scansion Analysis and Explication Essay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Love is Not All"

Scansion and Analysis

Edna St. Vincent Millay utilizes a traditional sonnet form in "Love is Not All" that is reminiscent of a Shakespearean sonnet, with an ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG rhyme scheme. It also contains a "turn," in that the argument that the poet appears to be making throughout the first half of the poem is suddenly turned in a different and unexpected manner so that the last lines of the poem surprise the reader and lead him to a contradictory or opposite conclusion. In this case, the first part of the sonnet is set to giving negative reasons for what love is not and why it is not so important in practical terms. And yet the poet concludes that in spite of all these practical reasons, love is still, in fact, everything -- that is, it is worth more than all other practical concerns.

The lines are written in iambic pentameter -- that is, they are marked by stressed/unstressed syllables of five feet per line, just like a traditional Shakespearean sonnet. And like a Shakespearean sonnet, it begins similarly -- by defining love in negative terms first, just as Shakespeare does in Sonnet 116 when he states, "Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds." Here, Millay gives voice to what Love is not, launching off from where Shakespeare leaves us, but holding true to the form which he sets down, from the first line, "Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink" to the last, "It well may be. I do not think I would.

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" The line breaks are not forced and some end with semicolons while others run into the next line, with full stops coming mid-line. This does not however disrupt the flow of the meter. The use of capitalization is standard and conforming to traditional writing norms.

The syntax is modern classical/conventional. The sonnet holds true to the sonnet structure as iterated by Shakespeare with 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter setting the course for the subject to announce itself, turn, and surprise in the end.

Part II: Explication

The first sestet (six lines) give the impression that love is not all that important. The second sestet then deviates from this course and prompts the reader to rethink love and consider how it may not be physical food but it can be a kind of spiritual food that can cause people to starve if they do not have it. The final couplet gives Edna's own position: she essentially comes clean before the reader, admitting that she would never give up a "memory" of love (that might sustain her soul) for any morsel of food that would merely sustain her body.

The main idea of the sonnet is expressed in the first line: "Love is not all" (1) -- and by way of contrast with that which sustains life -- food, drink, shelter, a "floating spar," (3) --….....

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