I don't think this poem is about love, but about creation. Like God, Millay sees herself as taking chaos and making a world out of it, though her world is sonnet-sized. The poem is full of allusions galore, from the ability of chaos to take any form (like Proteus) to the pious rape (Donne, "Batter My Heart") of forcing chaos to serve order. She does not claim to be able to understand chaos (as God would), but once she has made chaos serve order, she (like God) declares her creation "good." I also think that she is referring to human experience as feeling chaotic. Writing about it does not make the experience itself less chaotic, but it gives the writer a feeling of control that is satisfying. When experience controls you, the servitude is awful. When you control it (even without fully understanding it), it is rather like harnessing the power of the unconscious. No one understands their own unconscious, and yet it does seem to have its own rules: hence, the feeling that there is something simple behind what appears to be incomprehensible. Does anyone fully understand poetic creation? The ideas come from somewhere, and anyone who writes has to deal with the feeling that part of the activity is out of one's control.
Susan
|