[Allen Tice]

Though it might upset partisans of a type of modernity, one of Petrarch’s best sonnets (64) describes how Petrarch has caged his beloved Laura in effect inside his heart, whence she cannot easily escape, though of course she lives in married bliss with another man. It’s worth reading in the original, and in a good translation such as the one by Robert M. Durling. Millay’s is a Petrarchian sonnet.

So an easy reading has it as a response to that sonnet and about some individual in Millay’s life. If so, her “rape” of him while inside her “cage” goes beyond Petrarch’s image of a trapped flower who should get used to things and not mope.

Another reading is that it is an exercise in writing about poetry. Grotesque, and maybe not fully satisfactory.

Another reading has Millay screaming from her own insides. and rhetorically (only) caging her pain with plausible baloney.

I too think the weakest lines are 11 and 12, unless they are a scornful description of a nincompoop lover. Does that make sense?

Plausible Baloney is winning by a nose as the jockeys near the finish line, which is good. Freeze frame! There’s still a chance to place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.