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  #11  
Unread 12-12-2018, 12:08 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Personally, I can't see this as a roman de clé, with Chaos corresponding to a real-world, flesh-and-blood beloved. I see it far more abstractly.

I see Chaos as the general topic of love, about which many, if not most, poets write in an attempt to gain some sort of intellectual control of it.

Of course that effort to impose a sonnet's order on passion can never be completely successful--as illustrated by the fact that this poem, which began with the poet's bold claim that she would put Chaos into fourteen orderly lines, is only thirteen lines long.

And the poet's failure to do what she had set out to do structurally underscores her failure to do what she had set out to do thematically, too. Even if lovers could, by means of poems, force their beloveds to become something they aren't--in this case, forcing Chaos to become good and obedient and biddable, against his will--then love itself would cease to be what it really is, and would instead become a form of violence against their beloveds' true selves.

[Edited to say: In the next point, Allen made a joke while pointing out the fact that I miscounted. Then, being a kind soul, worried that he'd offended me by doing so, and edited his comment in Post #12. For the record, I appreciated the correction, and was amused by the way in which Allen delivered it. No worries, friend.]

Last edited by Julie Steiner; 12-13-2018 at 10:55 AM.
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  #12  
Unread 12-12-2018, 01:34 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Julie, I think there might be a problem with David's reference to Norma's introduction in post #7 because it implies that this poem has only 13 lines, whereas it actually has 14. Your comment is, as usual, very perceptive.

If she had left it at 13 lines, her Chaos would have fallen through the hole in the bottom of the sea and escaped. Any cut line should be end-stopped, yet not leave another line without a rhyme. I'd vote to cut line 8: "Till he with Order mingles and combines.", and I'd put a period at the end of "I hold his essence and amorphous shape [.]"

mmm

Last edited by Allen Tice; 12-13-2018 at 08:50 AM. Reason: XIII ≈ XIV
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  #13  
Unread 12-12-2018, 02:22 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Line 8 has been corrected per Eratosphere standards as unneeded.

Last edited by Allen Tice; 01-21-2019 at 01:03 PM.
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  #14  
Unread 12-12-2018, 02:45 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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LOL, happy to oblige, Allen.
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  #15  
Unread 12-12-2018, 07:24 PM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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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
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  #16  
Unread 12-12-2018, 09:29 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Susan, that's a very well thought out comment, with a lot more in it than my early "an exercise in writing about poetry." I especially like what you say here:

"Writing about [chaotic human experience] 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."

That feeling of control can begin by just labeling the experience, calling it names. At its worst, this can be tracing a path from innocent-seeming incident A to consequence B followed by possibly premature act C through disaster D, etc., all lined up like dominoes. The roads not taken, or taken. At its best, it can go the other way too. Our biological history ensures that we can usually remember the negative paths most easily so we can try not to repeat similar screw-ups and avoid other traps. Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 ("When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes....") calls the names at least, even if his problems can't be remedied. Millay wants to "make" him. I bet she did!

I like your remarks about poetic creation as sometimes being a strategy to put reins on chaos.

Very perceptive. Thanks!
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  #17  
Unread 12-12-2018, 10:37 PM
David Rosenthal David Rosenthal is offline
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I think Susan's analysis is generally on point, but with one huge caveat -- I think it is all ironic. I think Millay thinks there is really no difference between "Order" and "Chaos" (both capitalized as though equivalent epithets of the same thing) and ultimately that they aren't really things at all.

I think the uncapitalized "good," which is almost a consolation prize is opposed to an idealized "Good." Creating -- making art, making poems -- is what makes things "good" and the whole "Order" vs "Chaos" business is a sort of self-deceiving (or self-aggrandizing) ruse.

The last 3-4 lines taper down from a grand schema -- backs off from a deep analysis -- to simple, almost resigned, formulation of making things "good" without caring to understand more about what that means or how it works. The making "good" of it (whatever "it" may be) is, essentially the only way to make it understood.

David R.

Last edited by David Rosenthal; 12-12-2018 at 10:49 PM.
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  #18  
Unread 12-12-2018, 10:56 PM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is offline
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David, I wasn't addressing the tone in my remarks. I agree with you that the tone is ironic. Millay has an in-your-face kind of flippancy that allows her to get away with tackling big issues in an insouciant way. I think she likes the wiggle room of not being easy to pin down on anything, but I also think that order and chaos are meaningful terms and that they are not interchangeable in her argument.

Susan
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  #19  
Unread 12-13-2018, 05:52 AM
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Michael F Michael F is offline
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Yes, great analysis, Susan. Btw, I also heard Donne's "Batter My Heart" when I first read it.

M
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  #20  
Unread 12-13-2018, 08:24 PM
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Allen Tice Allen Tice is offline
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Donne’s poem (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...ee-persond-god) seems like the reverse of Millay’s, though the line about betrothal to the three-personed god’s enemy has it’s own interest if taken as more than a rhetorical device to allow a similarly hostile audience member to enter this poem of Donne’s: Donne performing as advocatus diaboli. But whether Donne experienced a crisis of his religious faith or not, and whether he was “espoused” to such an enemy are not what this thread is about. I would like to now be done with Donne!

Insouciance, flippancy, wiggle room: these are productive concepts I think. Now, “pious rape”, what for kind of rape is that? Is it legal? Or is it only eye and ear bait meaning not much except the flashing lights outside Steepletop, her residence? I confess that I haven’t yet tried to discover when Millay wrote this. I say “pious rape” is rhyme driven, pure and simple.
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